


The Long and Winding Road to Deadwood: A Prequel

by fragrantwoods



Series: The Long and Winding Road to Deadwood: A Prequel [1]
Category: Deadwood
Genre: F/M, Gen, Historical, Multi, Prequel, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2454146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragrantwoods/pseuds/fragrantwoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: A possible "prequel" account of how the relationship between Al Swearengen and Trixie the whore may have started, based on snippets of dialogue throughout the show. No spoilers.</p><p>Warning: Depiction and reference to violence between pimp and prostitute, underage prostitution, in accordance with historical accounts of such, and original character death.</p><p> </p><p><i>"I've lived most of my life as a whore, and as much as he's her misery, the pimp's a whore's familiar, and the sudden strange or violent draws her to him.</i> Trixie's pivotal line by David Milch, HBO's Deadwood</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Miseries and Familiars

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

 

A faint smell of coal tar rose from the wooden bricks of the street. He had not yet reached the part of town where repairs were rare. Chicago was growing at a dizzying pace. He was heading past the towering buildings and the new businesses, towards the more miserable areas that hadn’t changed much since his youth. There’d be no fresh paving there.   
  
Al Swearengen made his way down the street, scanning the crowd out of habit. He walked with a confident stride of a larger man. Although there was something in his demeanor that suggested he'd be a dirty fighter, he didn't  yet entirely look like the cutthroat pimp he was.  
  
His frock coat and trousers were close-cut, showing the lines of his still-trim body and powerful shoulders. His embroidered red and black vest was accented with gold buttons and a fine  watch chain. A heavy wave of thick black hair was a touch longer that the current fashion, framing his high cheekbones and setting off his frosty green eyes. His lips, thin but mobile, could quirk up in a knowing half-smile that some had found charming.  
  
Absent a need to convey a message, true or feigned, his face fell into an expression of chill contempt. His lips were tight and turned down, half hidden by a trim moustache. As he looked past the people around him, his hooded eyes were predatory, deep green eyes marred by tiny blood-colored flecks in the iris. Violence and killing had etched dark lines into his face, although he could still hide his ruthlessness when necessary.  
  
He stopped at a street vendor, handing over a coin for an apple. In that brief exchange, he cloaked himself with an air of affability. He gave the vendor a congenial smile, made a joking comment about his wares. The street vendor would have said he seemed like a decent gent, quick with a joke.   
  
Al overpaid for his apple by half, throwing it away after one bite when the vendor wasn’t looking. Prudence dictated that he charm his way into a false rapport with someone close to where he was going to do business. He never knew when he might need an alibi or a spy.   
  
His stomach tightened against the bit of apple as he approached the door. Most didn’t remember him here anymore. All but one of the worst of them were gone, although he could feel their ghosts through the wood. He could see himself at different ages, his breathing coming faster until he turned fear into hatred, hatred into coldness. He carefully shut that part of himself down. Memories were hindrances, and if they couldn’t be destroyed, they could be locked away.  
  
At first he thought his knock on the heavy wooden door was echoing in the chill morning air. As the pounding continued, he recognized the sound of nails being hammered into wood. The sound was different from experienced men building something to last and shelter. Amateur carpenters driving cheap nails into cheaper wood was a sound he remembered from his childhood; coffin-making sounds. It was a sound that no longer brought a chill; just noted as a tidbit of information.  
  
The heavy door swung open. The woman standing there was fat and piggy in a faded black dress, greasy curls piled on her head in a cheap attempt to look respectable. Her squinting eyes had a dark glint to them as she looked at Al. They remembered each other well, but they had an unspoken agreement to disregard the years he spent under her cruel indifferent thumb.   
  
Once, a few years ago, she had made reference to Al’s stay with her, two orphans in the room. He had given her a filial hug, his body hiding the knife pricking at her kidneys, whispering that the presence of children would hold his blade this one time only. She swore she would never speak of his time with her again. Seeing the tiny blood spots on her undershift that night, she swore to herself as well that she would erase Albert Swearengen from her memory, other than Al the procurer who occasionally bought her girls.   
  
“Mrs. Anderson.”   
  
He chose to ignore even basic social courtesies. He had not erased Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson from his memory.  
  
She had no such constraints. She still held out hope that a show of respect might work towards her benefit, or at least to her safety.  
  
“Mr. Swearengen, how do you do? It’s good to—“  
  
“What’s that hammering? Got a croaker on your hands?” He stepped inside and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He knew she would be worried over not seeing his hands. The thought made him smile.  
  
“Let’s talk in the parlor, shall we?” She turned to guide him into the parlor, shoulders twitching at him being behind her. She never liked her back being towards this one, even when he was a boy. Showing it, though, would not be wise. She sat on a ratty, overstuffed sofa, stained and indifferently cleaned over the years. Al remained on his feet looking down at her.   
  
“Ah…the unfortunate departed. That would be our Mamie, poor soul. Passed last night.”  
  
 _Mamie. Stubborn, stubborn Mamie._  
  
“Why ain’t she in Potter’s Field?”  
  
“Mamie put aside a bit here and there to see she got buried proper.” _A_ _nd gave it to the fucking parish priest to hold for her, damn her eyes for being a holding-out whore,_ she thought.   
  
“Did she?” He raised an eyebrow. He knew whores, and those who created them. “Who held the money for her?”   
  
Mrs. Anderson looked up at his dark flat eyes, wondering if he could now read minds.   
  
“Father Campbell, him who gave her the last rites. And her daughter gave up a bit of her coin, as well.”  _Little bitch, sneaky like her mother. At least she was among the living and able to take a beating._  
  
“A day of surprises.” He looked around the shabby room. “Mamie laid out here?”  
  
“She’s been lain out in her room. We’ve been preparing her earthly remains for her Christian burial.”   
  
A red haze went through his brain for a split second. He could cut her throat for that statement alone.   
  
“I’d see her. Pay my last respects, before we do business.”  
  
She started shaking her head, then saw the look in his eyes. Black heat and death looked back at her.   
  
She sighed. “You know the way. Ask whoever opens the door.”  
  
He left the room without a word.

 

 

****************************************

 

 

 

    

  
Al walked through the old house, long ago split into narrow rooms, each housing three or four orphan girls. Once, half had been for boys, big rooms with pallets side by side. The smell of old lard and rancid meat hung in the air by the kitchen, a faint smell of urine and lye soap permeating the walls. All the doors to the rooms were shut. Mrs. Anderson didn’t want outsiders catching a glimpse of the bare squalor that the children called “home”.  
  
He crossed the strip of dirt yard between the orphanage and the whorehouse. Filth flowed from the run-down privy, unseen by the tricks coming in by the front door. Economizing by skimping on lime, he noted. _Bad enough to have to sit on the stained wooden seat, praying it wouldn’t hurt too much this time, without choking on the stink of an ill-kept privy._  
  
 _One day, I’ll have so much fucking money, I’ll never have to smell the stench of other people’s shit._  
  
An older slattern opened the door, eyes rimmed red.   
  
“I’m here to see Mamie, pay my respects.”   
  
“Oh, mister, I don’t know—“   
  
He reached out and held her chin lightly, looking at the marks on her cheek and ear.   
  
“Hope that don’t owe to a problem with listening.”   
  
His low voice conveyed enough threat for her to fear him more than Mrs. Anderson. She walked him to Mamie’s room. He looked at the two whores going through Mamie’s meager belongings.  
  
“Get out.”   
  
They didn’t know him, but recognized a pimp’s ruthless voice. Both put down the books and clothing in their hands and left without saying a word.  
  
He looked down at the body lying in front of him. One of the whores had splashed some cheap cologne around to cover the smell. He shook his head.  
  
“Mary Margaret, you stupid cunt. You stupid, stubborn cunt.”  
  
He looked at the bruises on her face and neck. She’d been beaten, and then strangled. She was covered by a dirty sheet, the clothes she owned scattered about by the whores. Her blonde hair was matted and filthy, dirt still ground into her face and neck. Nobody had given her a final washing. He went to the door, looked at the hovering whores.   
  
“Get me a bucket of clean water, soap, and some fuckin’ rags.”  
  
He turned his back on their questions as he took off his jacket and started rolling up his sleeves.  
  
Al turned most of his mind off while he washed Mary Margaret Shea’s face, neck and arms, methodically running the soapy rag down her cold motionless flesh, then again to rinse her clean. He allowed a crack in the door that hid his memories.

******************

  
  
  
“ _You don’t have to stay here. I can buy you out from Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson, you can work for me. “_  
  
He remembered her soft Irish brogue.  
  
 _“Don’t worry about me, Albert. I managed to make the crossing with a babe in tow. I can manage this old bitch.”_  
  
“Oh, I’m not worried…worrying after whores is a fool’s game. But you know how this’ll turn out.”  
  
From their first conversation, he knew she was tough. She had made her way from Ireland to England while she still had some meat on her bones and her child was still healthy. She didn’t remember the first famine, but heard enough about it so she didn’t plan to go through the second, not with her child starving with her.  
  
She hadn’t anticipated the hatred America would have for the Irish. She had been blessed with blond hair and blue eyes, but her speech gave her away every time. A well-to-do trick had financed her and her toddler traveling to Chicago, where her accent wasn’t as much of a barrier. She soon heard of this place on Euclid Avenue, orphanage in front, whorehouse in back.

A deal made with Mrs. Anderson and she settled into a steady life of whoring on her side of the path, and her daughter settled in with the orphan girls on the other. Regular out-visits to the local priest on her half-days off (gratis) bought her daughter some schooling. 

  
The first time Al met Mary Margaret, he wasn’t thirty yet, but had a reputation as a man who could run an operation well, bringing the money in and keeping trouble out, wielding his bone-handled knife when necessary. He was successful enough so the owner didn’t question his penchant for recruiting whores from a particular Chicago orphanage. 

  
Mary Margaret had started to go by “Mamie” by then, trying to shake off the Irish. Brought out to the parlor reluctantly that day, she had studied the well-dressed English tough while he talked with Mrs. Anderson. Al could pass for American-born to most, but she caught the whiff of a Manchester accent in some of his words. Mrs. Anderson had left Mamie to entertain Al while she rounded up the available girls. 

  
Al hadn’t been looking for an older whore. He had better luck with ones young enough to be malleable. Still, this one had caught his attention. Even though she looked to be close to his age, she wasn’t beaten down. She had clear eyes back then, hadn’t found needle and dope yet. 

  
Maybe it was just that she could talk about things of the world in a way that he liked, like someone who looked at a newspaper now and again. His own whores tended to be ignorant and young, and if their mouths weren’t occupied by his prick, he would wish for cotton for his ears. 

  
After he made his choice from the girls presented, he asked her to walk with him while the girls readied to leave. The miasma of the place, whether real or remembered, was wearing on him. Mrs. Anderson had given her a vigorous nod of permission. 

  
Mamie was dressed plainly but respectably, not yet in her working clothes. He bought two apples from a street vendor as they walked. He watched as she took healthy bites with strong white teeth, crunching with pleasure as juice dabbled her chin. 

  
She allowed herself to enjoy a conversation with a man she hadn’t been paid to pleasure, watching him eat his fruit with efficiency, down to the core. She thought he ate like a man who still remembered what it was like to be little and hungry. 

  
They both were unused to talk that didn’t involve cash or scheming, and found it a pleasant change. She let her guard down enough to tell him her full name. He called her “Mary Margaret” the rest of their walk. She told him then of her arrival in America, how she and her child had come to Mrs. Anderson's place.  
  
Before he left, he surprised himself by offering for her anyway. He had the idea that maybe she could become his whore-mistress, take over that part while he built the rest of his business. She hadn’t wanted to leave, though. She tried to explain her fears of moving again.  Said she had “attachments to the community.”

  
 She was on his mind as he left with his new whores, and he wondered if she’d be there his next trip. He gave his traveling instructions to the girls, a tall redhead and a mousy, dainty brunette, and they headed out. He ignored their chattering and thought of intelligent blue eyes, bright and icy.

 

 

*********************************

 

 

    

Al’s next trip through came a couple of years later. He was surprised and pleased, at first, to see Mamie still there. He had been hoping, but whores tended not to last long at the Anderson place. That visit, he talked to her again about coming with him to his new business, this time a saloon in Cincinnati that was opening an adjoining brothel.  
  
Perhaps he had built up an idea of Mamie that kept her frozen in time, untouched by the realities of her work and her life. When she came into the parlor, she had looked pleased to see him but tired, still had last night’s liquor on her breath. Her face was puffy around her eyes. Her mouth turned down more than he remembered. Her ice blue eyes were streaked with faint red lines and her right eye had a dot of blood on the white. He’d seen people come back from worse, though.  
  
When she smiled, her face could still light up. She was still interested in the events of the country, and enjoyed sharing her opinion about politics and war. She talked as if she were exercising a part of her brain that didn’t get much use; slow at first, then warming to the conversation. He paid for three hours of her time, dropping the bills on Mrs. Anderson’s desk.   
  
They had a dinner of ham, potatoes and beans at a tavern two blocks from the orphanage. He told her about his plans for owning his own joint someday, maybe owning more, as they walked back. Still some time on the clock, they sat on a wooden bench by the fence that enclosed both whorehouse and orphanage, watching the afternoon go by.  
  
Mamie pointed out a young girl in the orphanage part of the yard. About ten or eleven, the girl had her mother’s blond hair and ice-blue eyes. Small but had a wary, scrappy look about her. Tough little orphanage kid.   
  
 _My daughter,_ she had said.  _She does well in school here._  
  
“There’s schools in Cincinnati.”  
  
She couldn’t meet his eyes, or tell him that she had visions of being far from Chicago and him getting bored with her, or unhappy with her work, turning her and her child into the streets. She was scared of having to figure things out all over again. It was easier to let things be. She tried to think of a way to say it that didn’t make her sound like a coward, and couldn’t.  
  
“Al, I’ve gotten used to it here. I know what to expect. Things…chug along without me thinking about it too much. And my daughter doesn’t know any other place than this. Sometimes I think she thinks she’s one of the orphans. Isn’t it better for her to be there than making do in a back room of a brothel?  
  
“Mamie, Goddamnit, you didn’t grow up there!” He slammed his fist against the peeling bench in frustration. “She’s in more danger over there than she would be living in the back of a whorehouse.”  
  
The image of Al carving a child’s space out of a whorehouse made her smile. “Al, are you sure you’re English-born? You’d put a receiving room out of play to make room for an innocent? You’ll be going to Confession next.”  
  
He knew she’d made up her mind. He took her hand and gave her a wry smile.  
  
“I’d make it up out of what you’d earn me.”   
  
They both pretended that they didn’t know Mamie’s high earning days were slipping away with every passing month, every liquor bottle left empty on her floor. 

*******************

  
  
He conducted his business with Mrs. Anderson, getting an olive-skinned girl with black hair and dark, almost black eyes. She was obvious in her attempts to please him, rubbing her breasts against his arm, stroking his leg while she chattered about her abilities and specialties.  
  
Finally he held her face and grumbled, “this trip will go a hell of a lot better if you just…don’t talk unless you have to. Can you do that, Rita?”  
  
She nodded, wide eyed, and settled into her seat. Finally able to hear himself think, Al could see things sliding downhill for this once-bright woman and her kid, and her not even willing to look at a safety rope thrown her way. Whores afraid of change kept him in business, but he would’ve liked to have seen this one turn out different. Al spent a scant minute running through his mental list of a number of things that he wished had gone different, then focused back on business. He didn’t let himself think of ice blue eyes this time.

 

 

*********************

 

The last time he had seen her alive, Mamie had looked like a hellish hollowed-out shell. He had told Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson he was taking her for a walk and would look at the new whores when he got back. Mamie’s eyes had struggled with the sunlight and her faded flowered dress hung on her skinny frame. He was unsurprised to see little punctures and scabs on the inside of her arms.   
  
He had changed, too. He had started hiring out as muscle for some men in Cincinnati. He kept his knife keenly honed and well-fed. It was making him as much money as any whore ever did. He was still one man, though, not given to trusting others as a rule, and every man who hired his blade was a potential witness who could send him to the long drop.   
  
He thought about moving his operation out of Cincinnati, go somewhere he wasn’t so well-known. Make a fresh start. He went back and forth on whether he wanted to continue to run whores and gambling, or if straight muscle and thieving would be more profitable. He thought a trip to Chicago might help clear his mind, help set him on one clear course of action. Seeing Mamie in this condition made him question whether catering to men’s vices was worth the cost. Made cutting throats seem cleaner somehow, even with carrying a greater risk.  
  
That was the first time he didn’t try to talk Mamie into coming with him. She didn’t talk much. She’d stopped reading newspapers, barely knew about the war and its effects. They sat at a dingier tavern closer to the orphanage this time, one not frequented for its food. Mamie sipped her whiskey and scratching absently at her arms, greyish-blonde hair straggling from its chignon.   
  
They both spoke at the same time.  
  
“I wish I’d listened—“  
  
“I wish you’d listened’—“  
  
“You go first,” he said, angry at the wreckage he saw before him.  
  
“They did it.” Her eyes stayed on her half-empty glass.  
  
He sighed. “Did what?”  
  
“I thought I could…or maybe the priest…that she could be protected.”  
  
“Did you?” He tried to keep sarcasm from his voice but damn, try to help somebody, try to warn somebody…waste of fucking time.  
  
“They—Mrs. Anderson—turned her out. Told me she was abed with the fever and I couldn’t see her for two weeks. They had Father Sullivan come tell me how she was doing, that she was getting better…”  
  
“Did they, now? Bet he was the first one.”  
  
He saw a spark of the old Mary Margaret then. “You don’t have to be such a bloody smug bastard about it.”  
  
“No? I  _knew_  this was coming. I  _told_ you what I knew about her and her orphan-pimpin’ ways. You thought, what, some education, the Church, and 'mother love' would keep your girl safe? “  
  
Her face sagged. “I thought I had more time…”

 

  
“Time gets funny when you’re a dope fiend, doesn’t it? And I think—no, I  _know_ — _some_ body at this table told you they’d turn her out as soon as she started to bleed.”

  
He sat back, frustrated, disgusted. His hand under the table opened and closed, opened and closed. Anger fought a poor battle with what traces of compassion he had left.

  
“So tell me, Mary Margaret, just out of curiosity, did you start the junk before or after they turned her out?”

  
She looked into her lap, silent.

  
“The answer ain’t in your cunt, Mary Margaret. Look at me.” 

  
He grabbed her wrist, squeezed until she winced with pain and looked at him. 

  
“Before, or after?”

  
She whispered, ashamed. “Before.”

  
She wished she could have blamed her taking up the needle on a mother’s grief at her child’s lost innocence, but she knew he’d see that for the lie it was.

  
His lip curled. “Mother love. Where would we be without it? Mothers… _whore_  so much better when they’re able to abandon their young. Fuckin’ kids just get in the way, don’t they?”

  
He had an image come to mind that might have been his mother…he wasn’t sure anymore what she had looked like.

  
“Did you tell yourself she’d be fine, she can take care of herself, when you cooked your first needle? Or did you think  _you_ had to whore for  _her,_  once upon a time, so now it was  _her_ turn to whore for  _you_? Or maybe you sold her for dope, figure you might as well get something out of the inevitable, hmm?”

  
With every sentence, she was becoming less of a person to him, more of a stand-in for his first betrayer. His grip continued to constrict against bone and vein.

  
She pulled her wrist back, now bright red. “I’m going to bruise from that.”

  
He stood up. “Good. Not anywhere near what you deserve.”

  
Tears dripped into her lap. She said something under her breath, still looking down.

  
“Goddammit, talk so I can hear you.”

  
“I said, would you buy her? Get her out of here?” She barely raised her head, not looking any higher than his chin.

  
He leaned over, breath hot against her face, a snarl in his voice

.  
“I don’t buy  _children._ ”

  
“She’s not a child. She’s _thirteen._ ” 

  
The words were out of her mouth, unexpected, cold and whorish, trying to promote her daughter to a better class of pimp.

  
The back of his hand was across her face before he realized it. She took the slap with the ease of experience. The other patrons looked away as he pulled her up and out the door. Errant women and their angry men were nothing novel here.

  
“I’m sorry.” She was used to apologizing for whatever made men slap her. She rubbed at her face as he pulled her along. She could feel his anger ebbing. Some men were like that…one slap and they started to cool down. There were worse men in her life, these days. 

  
Al ignored her apology, started casting around for a way out of this mess. “Look, I got my own problems. I gotta start thinkin’ about relocatin’, get out from under some conflicts I got going on.” He stopped outside of the orphanage door, looked into watery blue eyes.

“Why don’t you try another priest, or a doctor the other whores trust, see if you can get off the dope,” he said, weaving hopeful fantasies out of thin air. “I don’t know what to tell you about your girl…” he trailed off, not willing to make too many false promises. 

  
“Maybe next time I’m through here, if you’re off the stuff…maybe I can come up with something. No promises. I got my own way to make…same as you. Same as your girl.”

  
She smiled, He could see the old Mary Margaret for a second. “You still coming back here, even if you set up in Timbuktu?”

  
He saw again the long rooms, the crowded pallets, the midnight visits.

  
“Yeah. If I go that way again, running saloons and the like, I’ll still buy whores from here.” His mouth turned up in a mirthless smile.” Everybody’s got something strange about ‘em. Guess this is mine.”

  
“I’ll try to do what you said, Al,” she lied. “See you next time.”

  
“Yeah. See you next time,” he said with a false smile that he wished could have been genuine. He could hope he’d see her again, and in an improved state, but the odds were against it. Still, even a novice at the table rolled sevens once in a while. He knew he’d be back.

  
She went inside. Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson scurried to the door to beckon him in. 

  
He stood in the street. He made up his mind in that moment. Easier to spill a man’s blood and walk away than to think about whores being someone’s daughters. In time, he might think differently, looking at a balance sheet of risk and profit, but today, he didn’t have the stomach for it. 

  
“I’m outa the whore trade for a while, Mrs. Anderson. Gonna focus on some other enterprises.” He stepped up next to her, held her flabby arm hard. Grinning coldly, he stared through her surprised look.

  
“But when I start running girls again, believe me, I’ll think of you.”

  
He pushed her arm away, watching Mamie’s grey-gold hair through the window as she went into the whorehouse. He unconsciously stroked the sheath of his knife at his belt as he walked away from Euclid Avenue once again.

 

 

 

 

***********************

 

Al came back into the present, bucket of dirty water by his side. Two flies buzzed around the room as he dropped the dirty rags into the water for the last time. He had been able to remove the dirt and the dried blood on her face, although bruises still colored Mamie’s neck. He brushed her hair over the worst of them, combing long strands into a semblance of order. He’d bullied the other two whores into finding a clean sheet for her.  He crossed her clean hands over the sheet.She’d have to be re-arranged once they put her in the coffin, but at least she could look like someone who might finally be able to rest in peace, properly tended and mourned.

Al walked out of her room, out of the whorehouse. He had a vague impression of Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson starting to ask something about staying for the services. He cut her off with an emotionless “No”.

A man in a backwards collar, sleeves rolled up, stood over a rough pine coffin, hammer in hand. Al walked towards him.

“You Sullivan or Campbell?”

The priest raised his eyebrows. “I’m Father Campbell. And you are…?”

“None of your fuckin’ concern.” He shoved some bills into the priest’s hand. “This is for Mamie. Mary Margaret Shea. Get her name right in her send-off.”

He walked into the street, wondering at priests who ministered to whores, if they worded their prayers differently for them. He walked a few blocks to a hotel that bordered on respectability, and paid for a week in advance, plus extra for a bottle to be brought daily to his room. He doubted he could enter a tavern without being approached by working girls, and for the first time in his memory, he felt abstentious. Probably wouldn’t last long, but he would respect the feeling for a few days, even if he didn’t quite understand its origin.

 

******************

 

For the next week, Al walked the quiet city blocks in the early mornings’ hush, going near enough to the orphanage to buy an apple each day,never approaching the door. He drank alone in the evenings and reviewed his plans for the future. Weighed various options. Evaluated rumors he had heard coming out of Cincinnati that did not bode well for his future there. He had hired on as manager at a gentlemen’s sporting club, trying to balance his work as a knife for hire with once again selling liquor and women. Stretched too thin to operate with his usual care, he had overplayed his hand once or twice.

 Truth be told, it galled him to risk his neck for someone else’s purpose and profits, settling for fees that seemed less and less adequate. He still drew a distinction between a man who could cut throats when he had to, and a man who saw “cutthroat” as his vocation.  He had started to feel relief when he had no knife work waiting, and could concentrate on the evening’s honest trade.

As the days went into evenings, he put on his congenial visage and talked with staff at the more successful joints in town. He heard rumblings about “Manifest Destiny” and “Westward Expansion” in taverns and brothels frequented by military men. To be hundreds of miles away, finding new ways to turn a profit, was a tempting idea. Maybe one more year in his current joint would give him an ample stake to fund his heading West while he was still a relatively young man. He thought it was possible his luck could hold out for another year if he started stepping away from the muscle trade, if that last man’s family didn’t twig to the truth.

Head clearer by week’s end, Al was ready to take care of final business, buy his allotment of whores, (small this time, to conserve his cash) and head back. One last trip to the orphanage, maybe make sure Mary Margaret had been laid to rest in a manner keeping with what had been paid. See if her girl needed anything before he left Chicago.

He knocked on the weathered door. Mrs. Fat Fucking Anderson let him in again, acting like she expected him. She clucked about some new girls she had to show him. He let her chatter flow on by and walked through to the common area, upwind of the privies.

A young girl caught his eye. She reminded him of Mary Margaret, long wavy blond hair and blue icy eyes.  _Had to be the daughter_.  She and the girls standing with her noticed his look. He walked towards the group of young ladies, all in white cotton dresses trimmed in pastel ribbons. It was obvious that he was looking at the blonde. Soft and innocent, eyes wide, a smile turning her lips up at the corners.  _This was no whore_ , he thought. She had an almost angelic glow about her, lighting up her big wide eyes.

Eyes that had enormous, black pupils and a hint of glaze.

He watched as the angelic blonde took a final drag off her hand-rolled cigarette, then stubbed it out against the wall. She narrowed her eyes in warning to the other girls until they pulled back, and then walked towards him,eyes wide again. He could see subtle changes in her expression, preparing for the afternoon’s work, as she approached.

“Would you like to be my Daddy for the day?” She said with a sweet smile and practiced tilt of her head.

 He stopped. “Walk with me a minute.”

“Walking still costs, sir.”  She looked down at her feet.

“I’ll take that up with Mrs. Anderson. You’ll get your usual cut.” 

They walked down the path, near the raggedy orphanage garden. Al stopped when out of earshot of the other girls. He looked again at her wide,black pupils, only a hint of blue iris showing around them.

“What are you on?”

She smiled and all but batted her eyes. “What do you mean, sir?”

He struck her across the face with an open hand. With mild surprise he saw her fall to the ground, although he hadn’t hit her that hard. He imagined her mother teaching her the tricks of the trade _: When they hit you, drop down and act like they really hurt you. Sometimes that makes them stop_. He stood over her, hands in his pockets.

“Get up and answer my question, or next time you’ll be on the ground for real.” His tone was casual and dry.

“Again, what are you on?”

A sullen look came over her face, all traces of angel gone. “I take a bit of laudanum sometimes.”

Al raised his eyebrows and looked at her. She amended her statement.

“I take a bit, most days.”

“How much?”

“A dropper-full when I do, if it’s any of your business.”  Now he could see the scrappy orphanage girl she had been, lip poked out and frowning.

“You pull that “Daddy” bit a lot?”

She shrugged. “Some a’ the older gents like it. I got the tits to look like a kid, still.”

“Tell me how old you are. Without lying.”

She looked a bit uncertain at this. A look at his cold black eyes and the lingering sting on her cheek made her decide to tell the truth. He seemed to know his way around whore’s business.

“I’m fifteen, but dressed right, I can pass for twelve. Mrs. Anderson says I do best when the men think I’m younger.”

“Yeah, pimping youngsters is her strength.”

She lifted her chin. “I earn my way, going by what she says. Earned my mam’s way, too, when she got bad off.”

“So…you know the value of being a good earner.” He looked at her with a touch of respect. “That’s in your favor. And helped your mam out, when she needed you?”

She nodded.

 “Tell me about her.”

The girl’s eyes flashed a brief second before the laudanum brought her back down. “Her? Nothing to tell. Just an old doper whore, couldn’t bring the coin much anymore. Mrs. Anderson gave her the men who liked to hurt girls to get hard.” She began fiddling with a ribbon hanging from her waist, twisting it around her fingers.

”Gave her the wrong trick a week ago, he beat her then wrung her neck for her. Took my last dollar to get her put in the ground. Useless bitch,robbing me one last time from her fucking grave.”  Her delicate hands began smoothing out the ribbon again. “Earned me a last beatin’ too, when Mrs. Anderson found out I’d been holdin’ money back.” She dropped the ribbon and looked down, now twisting a strand of pale hair.

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Mothers.” He sighed.  “Not all they’re made out to be, sometimes,huh?” He sounded almost sympathetic.

She looked at him in surprise. There was something other than lust in his eyes. Like maybe he knew something about this, something about her. She shook her head. He was a man who could afford a decent suit, and buy girls when he liked. Probably had everything handed to him, had a mother who doted on him.She tried to steer him back to the day’s trade. This time she chose a more straightforward approach.

“So, you gonna fuck me, or should I suck your prick, or what?”

He ignored her question, rocking on his heels a bit as he phrased his own questions.

“You get along with the other girls, take your turn with the customers, refrain from fightin’?”

“Mostly, yeah.”  She gave up trying to work out what this man was looking for. She was smart enough to realize these were a pimp’s questions, not things a trick would ask. She figured she’d find out soon enough.

“What will Mrs. Anderson say if I ask her about bad habits?”

She looked away. “That I take the laudanum, I can be mouthy, and I show my temper now and then.”

“If she says different, I’ll buy you just to give you a fuckin’ beatin’ for lying.”

She could tell he meant it.  “And I sometimes get funny mick ideas like my mam about signs and portents.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Yes sir,” she amended.

He walked her back to the orphanage. “”Yeah” is fine. Don’t be throwin’ a fucking “sir” in there.”

She realized he had a made a decision about her, that she’d be leaving with him. She looked at the other girls, wondered if she would have felt sad about leaving if she hadn’t been on her laudanum high.

When they reached the main building, he told her to go pack while  he settled up with Mrs. Anderson. She told him lies about the girl’s obedience and her placid demeanor. He looked at her throat as he counted out the money, and pictured her bleeding out under his blade. He hadn’t offered an explanation for buying just the one girl, and she made a deliberate choice to not ask.

“Have her ready in an hour. I’ll be back with the wagon.” He gripped her arm again, making it hurt.

“I’ll be back, Mrs. Anderson. Wouldn’t dream of buying my whores from anyone else. Always makes me feel good, buying from you.”

Half way down the steps, he turned and asked if she was going to do anything about the trick that beat Mamie to death, then turned back away from her blank stare.

 

***********************

 

An hour later, Al tied the hired wagon a block from the orphanage and started down the walk, stopping at the street vendor’s stand. A week’s worth of overpaid apples bought him the tip that two well-dressed, serious looking men who had ridden in on fine horses were waiting inside the orphanage, carrying long guns with them.

_Fuckin’ Pinkertons,_ he thought to himself. Cincinnati had caught up with him, or was trying to. He couldn’t remember what lie he told the street vendor, but he followed it with a fiver.Twenty minutes later, a slim young girl, hair covered with a shawl, came out of the side entrance of the whorehouse, valise in hand. Another fiver paid to the tight-lipped vendor, and the wagon headed out of town.

The girl didn’t say much. Whoring under him probably wouldn’t be much different from whoring for Mrs. Anderson, she thought.  As long as she could have her laudanum and regular meals, and not be beat on too much, she’d get by. She noticed he was going by the little Catholic cemetery on their way out of town.

“What’re you doing here, mister?”

“Call me Al. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m lookin’ to see if I got my money’s worth on something.”

He spotted a small wooden marker with a decently carved “Rest in Peace,Mary Margaret “Mamie” Shea”.

“Is that my mam?”

“Yeah. She was…you look a lot like she used to, when she was younger.Before she got on the needle.”

“I remember before the needle. She was just a drunk then.” She didn’t sound pleased about the comparison.

He looked over his shoulder, watching for men on fine horses, then back at the angry girl. “You remember her readin’ the papers, or her books? Her talkin’ about The Old Country, or the war?”

Mister…um…Al, I don’t remember anything like what you’re talkin’ about.” She tilted her head and looked up at him, risked a question. “Did you used to fuck my mam?”

“No, I never did. Probably should have, but…no.” He thought he might mull that over one day, when he wasn’t worried about pursuit and murder warrants.

She figured her mam had been too old when this gent started coming around. Anybody buying her probably liked younger girls.

 

*********************

 

An hour out of town, he told her there was a change of plans, and he thought they’d be going  out West, maybe to Cheyenne, instead of Cincinnati.

 

*******************

 

Two hours out of town, she slid her hand up his leg to his prick, the way she knew men like a girl to do. This slap surprised her too much to use any of her mother’s tricks.

“What the fuck was  _that_  for?”

“You save that for payin’ customers, or for when I ask you for it. When I want you takin’ care of me, I’ll let you know. I don’t ask, you keep your hands to yourself.”

She stared at the side of his face closest to her. “How come you don’t want me to suck you or anything? Something wrong with me? Or don’t you like girls?”

A note of fear crept into her voice behind her challenging tone. Her grip on the wooden seat tightened. She didn’t know any trade but whoring, and just the basics of that, and her letters. If she couldn’t keep her new boss happy,she could end up dead before the week was out. She masked her fear with an angry glare.

His hand was at her throat before she saw it coming. He held her by the throat, not squeezing, not letting go. His calm, even voice was terrifying in its matter-of-fact tone.

“I don’t like mouthy cunts. I don’t like being questioned.

“I’ll keep you fed, a roof over your head, and get you payin’ customers that aren’t likely to hurt you. You, for your part, will do as I say.”

He squeezed just hard enough to make her feel the strength in his hand.

 “Do we have an understanding?”

She looked into his eyes. She saw the killer, the whore-beater. She saw the provider, the protector. Somewhere in the black cold, she thought she saw…maybe someone who had been in her shoes, had carried his own portion of hurt. Maybe still carried it.

She croaked out her first “I’ll be good” at Al’s hand.

He grunted, let go, and took up the reins again.

 

*****************

 

Three hours out of town, he asked her what her name was.

“”Elizabeth, like the Queen” my mam always said.”

Tears filled her eyes for the first time since her mother died. She bit them back.

“But everybody calls me Trixie.”

Al didn’t speak, just handed her the last apple from the Euclid Avenue vendor. She looked at him while she bit into the apple, wondering, as she watched the sunset fade into night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Making Their Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: A possible "prequel" account of how the relationship between Al Swearengen and Trixie the whore may have developed in the years preceding Deadwood's establishment.
> 
> Warning: Depiction and reference to violence between pimp and prostitute, in accordance with historical accounts of such, sexual references, language, physical violence, depiction of facial wounds and graphic medical images, abortion reference, and minor original character death.

 

**Iowa City**

 

 

There was a time when traveling sounded like something grand, seeing new things, new people. That was before she ever went anywhere. Sometimes she wondered if he stirred shit up just to have an excuse to be on the move again.

She felt her trick moving faster now. She looked over his shoulder at the clock on the battered dresser. If he’d hurry up and finish, she could wash up and grab some dinner before the good pieces got gone. She started scratching at his back, alternating between saying “Oh, God” and “Oh, yeah!” in his ear. A final shudder, a two heartbeat rest, and he was up and off of her. She listened to his tired praise, reminded him that an extra dollar on the dresser would help fix it so she was the next one up, come his next visit. Threw in a few words about his huge prick, him being a handsome young man, she’d think of him while she was with her next trick.

As the door shut, she got up to wash. When she looked at the dresser, she saw an extra two dollars. She smiled. Al said it was her born gift of gab, as much as her tight snatch, that got the boys to come across with the extra.

Course, he also said it helped that there was a sucker born every minute, that’d pay for a whore’s flattery.

Trixie gave herself a quick going-over at the washstand, then combed her fingers through her wavy blond hair. Tugging her stockings back up, she stuck her money away and went down to see what was set out. Darting a quick hand through the girls surrounding the table, she grabbed a chicken leg and went out back to eat in peace. She threw out a couple of smiles and winks at the men standing around the bar, mouthing “later” on her way.

This place beat the hell out of some of the dumps they’d landed in. She reckoned there’d been at least four stops between Chicago and Denver, maybe one or two more. She mostly saw the ceilings of dingy rooms, wherever they went. Not much difference in those.

Iowa City had been their first stop. Al had rented rooms near the train depot, running her and a local girl out of one, whiskey shots and cards out of the other. Al had a way about him he could bring out, made marks want to be around him. Some ways, he was as much of a whore as she was.

That gambit lasted at least a year, by her reckoning. Things went south when the local girl took sick and brought her cousin in. The new girl was popular, a good earner, but had a heavy hand at picking pockets. One night, her luck ran out with a trick not as drunk as he looked and a bad temper to boot. Trixie had been finishing up blowing a millinery salesman when all hell broke loose…again. She had barely spit and got her top back on when Al busted in, telling her to throw her things in a bag and go around back.

He did take time to collect the money from the salesman, the knife behind his back still dripping. He let it show when the trick seemed to want to linger. That took care of that. She never did find out what happened to the other girl, but when she walked through the other room to grab some clothes, she just saw the one body on the floor.

That was her first train ride. Al had met her at the back of the rooming house, clean and calm like he’d just been to church. For all his roughness and his quick hand, he could be counted on to get them out of trouble, to always have a secret stake for times like this.

“Jesus Christ! Get some shoes on and hurry the fuck up,” he'd said, shoving her bag at her. He bought two tickets from the stationmaster while she laced up her boots, knotting the laces just as the train pulled in.

She took a hit of laudanum as he hustled her towards the train, stoppered it back up with steady hands, even on the run. She didn’t miss the water too much…she’d gotten used to the undiluted bitter taste. She stuffed it back in her bag while they stood on the platform. They watched a few people milling around the rooming house, a couple of men with torches, as the train pulled out.

So much for Iowa City.

 

**************************

 

**Council Bluffs**

 

She didn’t remember much about the next place. She had missed her monthlies early in their stay. Trixie was shy, then, to talk to Al about that kind of thing. The second morning she threw up in her chamber pot, he heard her and figured out what had happened. She thought she’d get another beating for not saying anything, but he had been right kind about it. He had gone out asking around for a certain type of midwife while he let Trixie lay around like the Queen of fuckin’ Sheba. He even paid extra for the old lady to cook her a big hit of dope before, and made sure she held the needle in the flame for a good little while first.

The next night she could remember through the dope haze, he had let her fall asleep with her head on his chest, him stroking her hair. He made her promise that she’d never use a needle again, that she’d stick to the laudanum or liquor. Didn’t want her ending up like her mother. That week, she had seen some warmth in his eyes, like he really cared about her. He let her just give blow jobs for another week while she healed.

She thought that might have been in Council Bluffs. He had finally fucked her then, going easy, trying not to hurt her. He said at the time he just didn’t want her to start whining under a trick to where he’d ask for his money back, wanted to see for himself she was ready to get back to work. She could tell he liked it, though. It was months before he got mad enough to hit her again.

That time, she knew she deserved it. They had a good thing going in Council Bluffs, but a trick started fighting her over him coming too fast and wanting another go for free. If he had kept it to yelling, Al would have taken care of things. He had gone to hitting, though. Trixie couldn’t stand somebody hitting her that had no right to, and she’d stuck him with the little knife she carried. The man had gone crazy over thinking how to explain his wound to his wife, and then Al had gotten into it.

That was the end of their stay in Council Bluffs. Al had left with money owed to him, putting him in a foul mood no offers of pussy or blow jobs could improve. If anything, it made him madder. She kept to pallets next to whatever bed he slept in for the next month, missing the sound of his heartbeat, waiting on his forgiveness.

 

******************

 

**Lincoln, Nebraska**

 

Al’s forgiveness and her return to his bed finally came in Lincoln, brand-new capital of Nebraska. Trixie had waited in the wagon, jittery and on edge, while Al made arrangements in a boarding house run by a plain-faced widow on the edge of town. He had returned with a room key and a bottle of laudanum in his coat from the drug store up the block. Once she was settled and dosed with her first hit of the day, he had glad-handed the owners of a saloon on the next block until he had a job at the bar and door and Trixie had a job out of one of the back rooms.   
  
Lincoln had been on the raw side, but it was a bustling, busy place. Trade was good enough to get her a store-bought ready-made lady’s dress, dusty rose with lacy pale cream trim. Of an occasional Sunday, Al let her go to one of the town churches while he stayed in their rooms and worked on his dealing skills and various short cons. She swapped around between congregations, watchful for any of the family men she entertained, attending with wives and children. She knew she had crossed paths with a few, but they never seemed to fully recognize her, other than a sense that they knew the demure young lady from somewhere. For her part, she was careful to mostly keep her head down in Bible or hymnbook, enjoying the rhythm of the sermons and the sweet smell of oil-polished wood. The solemn cadences were a welcome change from the hectic pace of her evenings for the first couple of months.   
  
One visit to the local Catholic church had brought back unpleasant memories from her years at the orphanage, as she stood at the communion rail, unable to get down on her knees in front of the oily-looking priest holding the chalice. She couldn’t imagine what the congregation thought as she walked back up the aisle, face flaming and gaze straight ahead. She kept herself to the Protestant churches in town after that, when she felt a need to attend; a need that lessened every month.  
  
A town on the new side of wild in a brand new state, Al found others like him, but with more experience in real estate hustles and greasing political palms for profit. The seminaries and schools being established could not have been anywhere near as edifying as observing the local machinations between former Confederate and Union supporters, Democrats and Republicans. During their stay he saw a broken flagpole repurposed as an impromptu gallows, and a towering Judge browbeat an angry mob with no more than his voice and a couple of well-placed threats.  _In a new place,_ he thought,  _anything is possible._  He kept a keen eye on the ways and means by which power and wealth were sorted out.  
  
He also saw the power of the press at stirring up, then calming down, a citizenry. Al had always appreciated a good newspaper as a source of information, giving hints of things to come if read with care. Lincoln was the birthplace of his full understanding that the press could also be used to create events and steer outcomes. He sprung for rounds “on the house” out of his own pocket for the newspaper boys once or twice a week, learning how to herd newsmen in a desired direction. The first time he guided an editor to publish vague aspersions against a rival saloon,  he saw his and Trixie’s incomes jump from added custom. He figured he’d made back all he had spent, and then some.  _Befriending the press_ , he thought,  _might be the most useful long con of all.  
_  
If asked what she remembered of Lincoln besides whoring, though her frequent laudanum fog, Trixie would have talked about good times at the State Fair, a reluctant Al in tow as she looked at prize-winning pies and pumpkins. A brass band playing on a Sunday in the town park. Mostly, though, it was where Al allowed her back in his bed, and she felt safe more often than not.  
  
Their luck eventually changed as Lincoln rapidly became more civilized. When they arrived, the local jail was the back part of a town milk house. By the time they left, a state penitentiary was in the works, and lawmen seemed to be everywhere, bolstered by Ft. Kearney troops. The girl Al had obtained to run out of the saloon with Trixie left his joint to be some kind of high-kicking dance-hall girl. Part of the town had flooded that spring, making getting around even more miserable that it had been in winter, when at least a sleigh was a workable option. The only bright spot was a nicely run job done on an outbound stage road, Al setting up a young gang of road agents with information on cargo and arms of a lone stagecoach.   
  
After, most of the gang had been in favor of cutting Al out of his share, taking the numbers of four against one. A husky Kentucky boy, long-haired and handy with a blade, stopped that foolishness right quick, saving their leader from a throat-cutting. Al thanked him with a side lecture on choosing his confederates more carefully, and wondered if their paths would ever cross again. The boy had a leaning towards action around wilderness and mining towns, and had mentioned the Comstock.   
  
A week later, Al had wished that the Kentucky boy, or someone like him, had been with him at the salt debacle. He had made it out of the warehouse unseen, but the main thief and his German accomplice had been caught in mid-robbery, salt-filed shovels in the air, when the owner of the salt works and six lawmen had busted in on the heist. As he fled, he could hear men yelling not to be killed and errant shots were ringing in the air. Lucrative though it might be, robbing the salt basin barons, he thought he’s just get Trixie to gut him before he’d go to jail for stealing  _salt._  
  
 _Denver,_ he told her as he roused her to pack.  _He’d heard good things about Denver._  He and Trixie had headed for Denver and all the opportunities Al thought a big city had to offer to a man of his experience. Trixie dozed against his shoulder and wondered what Denver would be like.

 

 

**Denver, Colorado**

 

 

Trixie looked up at the sun low in the sky, tossing her chicken bone to one of the wandering mutts hanging around. She thought she had time for a quick cigarette before going back to work. As she smoked, she thought the air in Denver seemed clearer than Chicago’s atmosphere, but thinner, colder. _Wonder where he is today?_   _Edgy prick, he's being lately._ Stubbing her cigarette out in the dirt, she went back in the over-heated bright bar, setting her features in a promising smile. 

 

**********************  
  
  
Rays from the setting sun filtered in through leaded glass and lace curtains falling behind heavy damask drapes. The clink of thin china cups and high-pitched chatter on all sides was beginning to feel like an assault on his ears. Annoyingly small sandwiches and bite-sized pieces of cake sat neglected on a tray next to their table, alongside some type of pastry he couldn’t identify. There was no conversation at his table until the waiter finished pouring the tea into two teacups, withdrawing after leaving cream, sugar, and lemon next to the tea service. Al waited stoically for a response to his proposal, already getting a rebuttal prepared against refusal.  
  
“Mr. Swearengen, I have no doubt as to your bona fides. You have to realize, you are asking to set up business that is in direct competition with us for both clientele and workers. That’s quite bold for someone new to the area.”  
  
The well-dressed woman in front of him seemed to be moving from mild interest to disapproval. She set her tea cup down and waited for his response, discreetly looking at her brooch watch to remind him that his time with her was running out.   
  
“Mrs. LaRue, I’m not tryin’ to horn in on your business areas as such. I’m just tryin’ to lease a small saloon, running less than a dozen girls, two or three faro tables. I don’t see that as any real competition to Madame LaRue’s sporting houses. I ain’t gonna have girls in furs and diamonds, trust me. My clientele will most likely be men that find your establishments out of their price range, anyways.”  
  
Pearl LaRue ran a fingertip around the engravings in her watch.   
  
“My colleagues and I have lower-end establishments as well, Mr. Swearengen. Not all our houses are on Market Street. And that puts us back at square one.”  
  
“Have you considered working at one of the established houses? Mrs. Bennett is in need of a bartender.”  
  
He looked at the blonde matron sitting with him, fancy hat and diamond earrings. He couldn’t decide if she was just obtuse or actually trying to be insulting. Galling enough to have to seek permission to open a saloon from the head of the Denver whore union, or whatever they considered themselves, Mrs. LaRue speaking for the main madams in town. Worse still was her offering him a job, like he had come hat in hand, begging for work. Wouldn’t be here at all if the fuckin’ chief of police hadn’t warned him to meet with Mrs. LaRue before trying to set up shop, else not a property owner in town would speak to him.  
  
“Not an option. I don’t plan to work for anybody but myself.”  
  
“Pity. Actually, I know of another option, if it’s to your taste.” She hesitated for a second, looking at him thoughtfully, then pulled a heavy embossed card from her purse.   
  
“Dr. McDonald mentioned that he was seeking a well-favored gentleman to assist him in his treatment of particular ladies’ maladies, primarily hysteria. I understand the pay is more than adequate for a person of talent.”  
  
Al’s eyes turned stony. “I should become a whore, instead of runnin’ them, that what you’re saying?”  
  
The elegant woman stood up, straightening her gloves. “We all whore in some way or another, Mr. Swearengen. You appear to meet the doctor’s requirements and seem to be a good twenty years younger, which I imagine would be much appreciated by the good doctor’s patients. I lost a piano player to him last year for the same purpose. That young man left for San Francisco in the spring with enough money to open a fifteen room sporting house.”  
  
He watched in silence as she laid the card beside his plate. At her cocked eyebrow, he stood up as well.   
  
“What about my whore? Is she a problem, too?”  
  
Mrs. LaRue leaned towards his ear. “You can continue to hire out your girl to the establishment with which you currently have an arrangement. You can also deal faro at Sunny’s, tend her bar, or provide services for the doctor. I don’t give a good goddamn if you service gentlemen yourself, if you’ve a bent in that direction. What you cannot do, Mr. Swearengen, is operate a full-scale establishment of your own in this city." She gave a discreet nod at the two uniformed policemen standing at the door of the tea shop, courtesy of the Chief.   
  
He didn’t react to the implied threat. “As a courtesy, Madam, will you at least give me a sensible reason, so that I might understand why you feel you must…impede my commerce?”  
  
She stepped back. “Look in the mirror, Mr. Swearengen, when you return to your rooms. Ask yourself if that is the face of a man who would be satisfied with limiting his control to one house, one operation, and working within parameters set by others. Your answer to that question will illuminate my answer to you.” She tilted her head so the feathered brim of her hat hid her eyes. “Good day to you, sir.”   
  
Raising her head, her eyes were dark with warning until she turned towards the waiting officers, greeting them with a warm smile and bright pleasantries. The most successful madam in town left him there, standing over his empty cup, stymied. He crumpled up the heavy card, stuffing it is his pocket as the left the shop.

 

 

***********************

 

  
Trixie was in their rooms when he returned, hours before he expected her to be done at Sunny’s. He groaned inwardly. He had been looking forward to some solitary time to work out a plan for his next move.   
  
“What the fuck you doin’ home so soon? Tricks run out of money?”  
  
She sat on the settee by the window, still dressed in her working clothes. “In a manner of speakin’. Business was slacking off and the other girls were giving me the evil eye. I was ahead of my usual earnin’s so I thought I’d give them and me a break and head back.”  
  
He stood over her. “Oh. Is that what you thought?”  
  
She looked up at him, measuring his beginning twitchy rage.   
  
“Al, once we have our own place, you get some girls that work good with me, it’ll be different. I just feel like…it’s best I not overstep. I don’t know these girls, who’s temperish and such, and it’s not like you’re there to handle things, they start going wrong.”  
  
He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her to her feet.   
  
“You goin’ with your _feelings,_  now, as opposed to what I tell you to do? You makin’ the decisions now, Trixie? You want to run things in this  _fucking_ town of Amazons and Medeas? Maybe _you_  think I should be a whore too, us pooling our earnings at the end of the night. That your thinkin’ on the subject?” He was glowering now, dark and hot, his fingers digging into her arms.  
  
Trixie started to twist to get some ease from his hands.  
  
“Jesus, Al, what the  _fuck?_  I’ll go on back right now, you want me to.” Her hands reached up for his.   
  
His fingers twitched on her sleeves for a second before he threw her onto the bed.  
  
“Do whatever the fuck you want.” He grabbed for a half-empty bottle on the table, drinking the whiskey in deep swallows. He walked back and forth in the suite, fidgeting with his moustache, frowning and muttering.   
  
“Ground floor.”  
  
Trixie looked up from her place on the bed. She had lain very still as Al paced and grumbled. She frowned. “You want us to…move to a ground floor room?” She thought maybe he was looking to economize or some such.  
  
“We gotta go somewhere we can get in on the ground floor, not have to kowtow to cunts and cocksuckers, think they run every goddamn thing like their own personal fiefdom.”  
  
She sat up. “And where would that be? Any city we go to, every place we’ve been…it ain’t like we can find a place where we’re the first to offer pussy and spirits, 'less you’ve found a way to get us to the fuckin’ moon.”  
  
He was starting to talk faster, in excited, slightly drunken tones. “We been goin’ west for years, things gettin’ more open as we go, until this place. But we’ve stayed in cities, towns, places with hotels and whorehouses, saloons already standin’."  
  
He began gesturing with his hands. “We need to go somewhere where I’m the head cocksucker that has to be gone through, anybody wants to do business. Not some mayor, or police chief, or fuckin’ mother hen.”   
  
She rolled over on her stomach, watching him. “Like where?”  
  
He threw the morning’s newspaper at her. She could read headlines about Indians and forts and a few small gold finds out in the western territories. Some article about the Comstock mine.  
  
“Read that in your leisure time. From here on out, you and me are going to earn as much as we can, as fast as we can, until we’ve got enough to stake us to a real move.”  
  
She frowned. “I thought you had enough of a stake to rent us a working house.”  
  
“Yeah, but not enough to move to a place with nothin’ and build a place from the bare ground up.”  
  
He sat on the side of the bed, eyes wild with imagining, speech rapid and staccato, half talking to himself. “Get established, might be rough in the beginning, but get some good men around me, get some fast action going, folks’ll have to get my permission to do business, maybe pay fees or the like.”  
  
He laid his hand on her hair. He looked at her but seemed to be seeing something else. Still, he was almost gentle.  
  
“You get some rest tonight. Startin’ tomorrow, you’re going be fuckin’ and blowin’ like your life depended on it, addin’ whatever circus tricks you know to get those tips up.”  
  
 _Great._ “What are you going to be doing while I’m doing all this fancy fucking?”  
  
His hand went in his coat pocket, smoothing out the crumpled card. “Don’t worry about what I’m doing. Just pull in the money, hmm?”  
  
He undressed, blew out the lamp and got into bed. He lay there next to her in the dark, eyes open and feet fidgeting.  
  
“Need some help gettin’ to sleep?’  
  
"If you wouldn't mind, yeah.”  
  
She heard the snaps unfastening as she bent over him. Fifteen minutes and one mouth-rinse later, both finally fell asleep.

 

**********************************

 

 **  
**Trixie yawned and stretched in the late morning light. The bed was empty beside her. She looked around the room, saw no sign of Al, and snuggled back under the covers for a few more winks. She was almost asleep again in the warm blankets when she heard the key rattle in the lock. Trying to get on her feet before Al got in the door, she was distracted until she heard, “So, what do you think?”  
  
Her hand covered her mouth as she gaped at a clean-shaven Al.   
  
“What on earth…I haven’t seen you like that in years!” She walked around him, looking at lips fuller than she remembered. “You look ten years younger.”  
  
“Good. That’s what I was going for.”   
  
She wished she had a cigarette handy. “What’s the deal with that, then?”  
  
Al brushed off his coat and straightened his cravat. “The deal is, you’re gettin’ your ass over to Sunny’s to get the late morning rush while I get an account opened at the First Bank of Denver.”  
  
He handed her a few bills. “Get your meals at Sunny’s, and don’t look for me until late. Don’t spend this unless you have to. That’s your laudanum money too, so slow that the fuck down, best you can.”  
  
For the next six weeks, Trixie felt like she and Al shared a room in shifts. He was out the door in the early morning, hours before she left for work. There were late nights that he woke up enough to see it was her coming in the door, check her earnings, and go back to sleep without saying a word.  
  
One evening, sent home because the rain and the cold were keeping customers at their own hearths, she came in while Al was still up. He still had his young clean-shaven look, but the circles under his eyes were wearing some of the new off.  
  
She shook the rain off her shawl by the stove.  
  
“Hell, I’ve about forgot how to talk to you, it’s been so long we were in the same place and both awake.”  
  
He sighed, laying his head against the back of the damask chair. “I bet your memory returns real fuckin’ quick, my luck.”  
  
She rolled her eyes.  _What a charmer.  
_  
She tried again. “You mind pouring me a drink and maybe telling me how your fuckin’ day went?”  
  
“I’ll hand you the fuckin’ bottle and you can pour us both one.” His eyes closed, he grabbed the neck of the bottle and extended it towards her, almost hitting her in the face.  
  
“Goddamn it, Al, watch what you’re doing! You almost busted my nose with…”she sniffed, taking one deep breath, then two. “Is that…why the fuck does your hand smell like pussy?”  
  
He opened one eye. “Do I have to answer that to get a drink in a fuckin’ glass?”  
  
She took the bottle and started to pour two shots. “You doing that thing with a doctor again, doin’ his lady patients?”  
  
“I am.” His eyes were still closed. She put a glass into his hand.  
  
She thought she’d never get used to the idea that women would pay for something they could do themselves. Maybe the well-to-do were different. She shook her head. No telling why they couldn’t get their men to do for them, either, men who must think enough of them to pay for… _well, to buy their women a kind of whore, if you get right down to cases._  
  
The idea of Al in that role made her uneasy. She knew he’d done it before, but it didn’t seem to fit at all with the man she knew. She figured maybe he saw it as just another kind of con.  
  
She took a sip and enjoyed the burn. “You makin’ any money at it?”  
  
He put his feet up on the bed and reached in his pocket. She gasped at the roll of bills.  
  
“$250 today, and another job waiting tonight.”  
  
She looked out the window at the cold drizzle and the street lamps reflecting on the wet pavement. “Must be a widow, you going out at night, or a woman sure that her husband ain’t comin’ home.”  
  
He rubbed his eyes. “Different kind of job.” He got up and stretched, then started changing into rougher clothes. He took his main knife out of its leather sheath and started honing it with spit on a small whetstone.   
  
Trixie got quiet. She used to like to pretend that this side of him didn’t exist. One day, she found it didn’t matter one way of another to her, as long as it wasn’t her neck.   
  
“Muscle job?”  
  
He frowned at her as he put his boots back on. “None of your concern.”  
  
She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled.  _Shitty Denver weather.  
_  
“See if you can rustle up a sandwich for when I get back.”  
  
“Okay, Al.”

 

*******************************

 

 

  
He was not nervous. He had been cutting throats too long to be nervous. The rub of it was that he had also been steering clear of the law for a long time, and this was shoving too many angles together at once. So he was…feeling the need to be very  _careful,_  but not nervous.  
  
Pearl LaRue had hidden her tears behind a heavy black veil. Her rage and umbrage had kept her slightly shaking as Al was escorted to her office in the plush Market Street parlor house. Elegant women in vividly colored low-cut silk gowns walked the room, straight-backed and gliding, greeting the men and guiding them to settees to discuss the night’s arrangements. Fresh flowers brought by rail from California filled tall crystal vases. He had felt decidedly out of place as he walked to the upstairs office, noting that Pearl would have an unencumbered view of the main parlor as soon as she stepped out of her door.

 _Handy arrangement.  
_  
He stood until she sat down after greeting him. She raised her veil and laid it carefully over the brim of her hat. Her eyes were red and swollen.  
  
“Mr. Swearengen, at the end of our last conversation, I had one of my men check your background.”  
  
He waited.  
  
“You did some…work in Cincinnati for a man with whom I am familiar. A man who is close-mouthed, so I couldn’t discern the nature of your work. I do, however, know that this man does not brook anything less than the highest quality of his hires.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“The fact that you are here and in good health tells me that you were satisfactory to him.”  
  
She got up again and handed him a large book of photographs, beautiful women in graceful poses.   
  
“Please turn to page 15.”  
  
“Ava Marteen.” He looked at the photograph above the name. A young dark-haired woman with brown eyes that looked almost black in the picture. She had a slight smile in the posed shot, a hint of dimple in her left cheek. A filmy scarf with flowers had been draped over her half-reclining nude form. High forehead and Grecian nose, she looked like a living cameo.  
  
“Pretty girl.”  
  
“Follow me, please.” Pearl went to a bookcase that slid on tracks to reveal an entrance to a back hall. Al raised an eyebrow at this but followed the madam to four plain doors at the end of a narrow hallway.   
  
“Occasionally, when a girl is unwell, she recuperates away from the public areas, with the doctor coming and going without…bothering the customers.”   
  
“So, she’s sick?” He stood outside of the last door with Pearl, hands clasped behind his back, wishing she would get on with her purpose.   
  
“Not exactly.” She walked over to the narrow bed, motioning for Al to follow. “I wanted you to understand fully the nature of the job I have for you.”  
  
She turned up the small oil lamp by the bed. The figure on the bed was female, and had long dark hair, and there the resemblance to the picture ended. Bandages covered her eyes and sections of her face. Here and there he could see the edges of black silk stitches, some running from forehead to chin. The room felt hot and close, and he thought he could smell a whiff of putrification.  
  
“What happened to her?”  
  
“We had problems with this particular trick in the past, getting rough with the girls once in a while. I would talk with someone in authority over him, and he would stay away for a month or two, then come back with apologies and swearing it was the drink, or bad opium, and would behave for a time.”  
  
“Why’d you let him come back? Why didn’t you have someone do for the cocksucker after the first time?”  
  
Pearl sighed and sat on the straight-back chair next to the bed, absently stroking Ava’s arm as she talked. “He’s the son of the Police Chief’s cousin. The Chief considers him like a nephew. I’ve heard rumors that his father is in an asylum somewhere back east.”   
  
She looked up at Al with a sad cynical smirk. “And of course, the man himself is also an officer.”  
  
She turned back to the girl in the bed. “And Ava is a whore. Just a whore, for all her education and genteel ways.” Al could see her throat shaking now. “So, any notion of justice…” her voice trailed off. She cleared her throat.  
  
“If she lives, the doctor says she might have the use of her left eye. The right one was…very damaged. And then the other cuts…The concern, of course, is to attempt to fight infection in the…around the eye area. He’s been applying carbolic acid dressings, but I believe he’s surprised she’s not yet succumbed.”  
  
The bandage around the girl's right eye was stained with brown and yellow patches. The darker yellow patches looked wet.  
  
Pearl took another deep breath. “After he cut her, he beat her in the sides, breasts, and between her legs. Kicking, actually, the doctor thinks. He was gone before another girl looked in on Ava. The girls were having an evening of singing at the piano and no one heard anything. She usually kept a Derringer with her,” she nodded at the tiny gun on the nightstand, “but it didn’t do her any good.”  
  
The little lady’s gun looked like a toy, gleaming in the oil lamp’s flame.  
  
“It’s awful close in here. You think we could talk outside?”  
  
“Certainly.” She stood, giving a final pat to Ava’s arm, and they left. Al thought he heard a muffled whimper from the bandaged figure.   
  
“She on anything?”  
  
“We give her opiates as the doctor suggests. In another day, he’ll tell me if there is any hope, or if he sees signs of worsening infection. If he does, at that time, he will provide as much opiates as…as she needs.”   
  
After the sickroom, the narrow hall felt almost light and airy. Pearl has ceased any trembling and walked back to the hidden door to her office, back straight and shoulders square.  
  
Al was ready for this to be over. He thought of other whores he had known, dead and alive. And the one in his suite of rooms here in town. He felt his pulse speed up as he asked, “does this cocksucker ever…has he been known to frequent Sunny’s on Holiday Street?”  
  
“I don’t believe so. Sunny’s is a step or two…they cater to a more workingman’s trade. This man feels himself of a higher station.”

  
The whore-murderer.”  
  
“The whore-murderer, yes. He also sees himself above other policemen, probably above the Chief.”  
  
Al tapped his upper lip, missing his mustache. “Not well-loved, even by his own?”  
  
She turned thoughtful. “That is my impression, yes.”  
  
“Tell me about my fee.”  
  
Pearl looked down at her desk, then met his eyes. “Fifteen thousand dollars. Five thousand now, ten thousand after you notify me it’s done. You will need to make your own arrangements for your protection and whatever you need to leave town, if that’s your plan.”  
  
Al tried not to show his surprise. “Fifteen thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. Not that I’m arguing, but I have to say, I’ve done more for less.”  
  
She turned to look out the window into the dark. When she turned back to him, she had replaced the veil over her face.   
  
“Ava was my sister’s daughter—my niece. She wanted to work a year or two, lay some money by, then go out to California and act on the stage.” He saw a glittering streak behind the veil. “She had a lovely voice.”  
  
She touched a finger to the tear track, then handed him an envelope. He felt the thickness and did her the courtesy of not counting it in front of her. Another envelope had pages with address, description, taverns and sporting arenas he frequented, and a penciled note that he would be at a prize match near the train yards tonight. The madam rang a small brass bell.   
  
“Emilee will escort you out by the back way. I need to prepare a subterfuge to explain to my sister why we could not wait until she arrived to bury her daughter. Ava would haunt me forever if I allowed anyone who cared for her to see her like that.”  
  
“Mrs. LaRue, my condolences on—"  
  
“Thank you, Mr. Swearengen. There is only one condolence I wish for at this point.” Her eyes turned back to her desk as a willowy blonde came to escort him out.  
  


****************************

 

Street snitches are much the same in one city as in another. Before midnight, Al was two doors up from the saloon hosting the prize fight. Flush with winnings and drink, his target, a tall thin man in a derby hat, did not notice he was being followed as he cut away from his fellows. Al watched him pause under a street lamp to ruffle through his winnings, more gloating than counting.  
  
Al put on his gregarious face, friendly and helpful with a roguish edge. He let himself sway a bit on his feet and slurred his words slightly.  _Hey, pal, you feel lucky tonight? Inside track on some action over here—high roller rubes, sin for a couple o’ swells like us to let ‘em keep their money, eh?  
_  
He kept the patter going, offering to buy the man a drink once they got to the table. His target patted his chest lightly as if checking his weapon was still under his coat. Reassured, he followed Al towards a brightly lit door, nodding as Al asked him to hold some of Al’s card money in case someone tried to fleece him:  _I can see sharps would steer clear o’ you, pal. You almost got the look of a marshal about you, am I right?  
_  
 _No, no, we can’t go in the front. They run a tight game here, gotta go ‘round the back, I’ll vouch for you, I can tell you’re a sport…  
_  
Flattery, drink and greed got the man into the alley between the brightly lit door and a dark three story warehouse. Thick walls kept whoever was within the building with the brightly lit door from hearing the thuds and groans and the one high-pitched wail that was suddenly silenced.   
  
Al cleaned his blade on the leg of the man’s pants and headed to his rooms in the chill night air. His knife felt hot through the leather sheath. He had one more errand before he was done for the night.

  
  
*********************************

 

  
He paid a street boy two bits to go into Sunny’s and ask for Trixie, the blonde whore. Keeping to the shadows to hide any stains, he spooked her when he grabbed her arm from the dark.   
  
“Al, what the hell--?”  
  
“Come on, we’re going back to the room.”  
  
“Al, a guy in there owes me five dollars. Let me go in and—“  
  
“That’s why you get all the money up front. Now, come on.”  
  
She let him pull her along as she tried to explain it was her tip, not her fee she was waiting for, and how stupid did he think she was, anyway, while he hustled her along the dark streets. Under a lamp near the hotel, he stopped.   
  
“Look at me.”   
  
"What?”   
  
“Do you see any blood, anything on me that shouldn’t be there?”  
  
Trixie grew still and looked him up and down, carefully. She’d done this before.   
  
“Wipe the top of your left shoe on your pants."   
  
Whatever had been there soaked into his black pants without a trace.  
  
Okay, you’re fine.”  
  
He held her arm as they went upstairs.   
  
Shutting the door behind them, he looked at her, hollow-eyed.  
  
“Pack. We’re headin’ out first thing.”  
  
Trixie frowned. She had been with Al for ten years now, and was quite sure she’d seen him within hours, sometimes minutes, maybe, of him ending a man. Usually he kept a steely calm, occasionally he acted like it was nothing. But this almost haunted look—this was different. She decided to keep her own counsel for now.  
  
“Trixie.”  
  
He had come up behind her as she gathered three dresses and some underthings into a valise. She turned her head back towards him.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She started at the touch of his hand on the side of her face. Wary, she stood still, waiting to see what this was about. He turned her towards him, his fingers lightly moving over her cheeks, temples, forehead. He held her face in his hands, his thumbs lightly stroking over her eye brows, down to her jaw line.   
  
“Anybody ever tries to hurt you, you scream bloody murder and you don’t stop until me or somebody like me gets there, understand?”  
  
She put a hand on top of his. “Anybody tries to hurt me is gonna be real fucking sorry—I’m tougher than I look, Al. Better armed than I look, too. You know that.”  
  
His eyes got shiny as he grabbed a hank of her hair and pulled, hard.  
  
“Ow! Goddamnit, Al, that hurts!”  
  
He gripped her chin with one hard hand, continuing to yank her hair tight with the other. He spoke in a deadly monotone.  
  
“You listen to me, you reckless cunt. Any man tries to hurt you, you  _get help._  You try to take him on your own, so help me God… if you live through it, I’ll kill you myself, understand?”  
  
 _He has the look of a man who’s seen his worst nightmare walking,_  she thought, fighting the urge to grab at his hands.  
  
“Sure, Al, whatever you say. I swear I’ll be good.” She winced. “Just…could you please let go now, please?”  
  
He looked down at his hand on her jaw, slowly unclenched his grip, then loosened his hold on her hair.  
  
“Get packing. I want us able to leave out as soon as I take care of a bit of business.”  
  
She rubbed at her jaw, gently touched her scalp.  
  
“Sure, Al. Just—yeah, I’ll be ready, okay?”   
  
She finally lay down to get some sleep before sunrise. She watched him sit in the damask chair, shirt unbuttoned and cravat hanging loose, facing the door. His sheathed knife was on his right thigh. Every once in a while, until she fell asleep, she could feel him turn to look at her, then look back towards the door.

 

*********************************

 

  
An hour after sunup, Al walked the short stretch to Madam LaRue’s Parlor House. He hung back behind a parked horse cart as two uniformed policemen walked down the steps and away from him. A young maid came out to sweep the porch, gesturing for him to wait when he asked if Madam LaRue was receiving. She disappeared, then returned, beckoning him inside.

The girl steered him away from the main parlor to a flight of back steps by the kitchen. In another minute he was in front of Pearl LaRue’s office door. Two sorrowful damp-faced girls came out, motioning him to go in and speak to the black-veiled madam.  
  
Once again, he stood silent in front of her while she readied herself to speak.  
  
“I heard this morning that a man was found dead by the train yard.” She looked past him. “They say his throat was cut.” She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. “They say it was the Police Chief’s nephew.” He took the envelope and waited.  
  
“Within, you’ll find ten thousand dollars.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
She pulled another envelope out of her desk drawer and met his eyes. “They say he was beaten badly before he died. Ribs broken, leg stomped in half. Multiple kicks to the groin, testicles almost torn off from the force.” She played with a silver cross around her neck. “They think it was an amateur, maybe someone he wagered with last night.”  
  
“Really? What makes them think that?”  
  
He fingered the second envelope.  
  
“It was strange, they said. Whoever did it had a sharp enough blade, but terrible aim. The poor man’s face was sliced quite a bit before his assailant made the final cut to his throat.”  
  
“So what’s this, then?”  
  
She smiled an icy smile. “That, Mr. Swearengen, is another five thousand dollars. I am a firm believer in quality pay for quality work.”  
  
“I’m sorry we had to do business under these circumstances, Mrs. LaRue.”  
  
“As am I. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” she broke off, touching a large bottle of opiate, full to the neck.  
  
“I met again with the doctor this morning. I have a medical situation to which I must attend.”  
  
He nodded again, standing aside as she got up and went to the door. She stopped in front of him.   
  
“One last thing, Mr. Swearengen. I’ve seen your young whore, the one that’s been at Sunny’s of late.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She sighed. “I’d not speak against the profession, as whoring has been very good to me, as a worker and an owner. But if the young lady ever shows an inclination or ability to do something else with her life, something that doesn’t put her with strange men behind closed doors several times a day, more times at night…I would hope you might consider encouraging her, if you care for her at all.”  
  
“I’ll consider it, comes the day she shows an interest.”  
  
“Godspeed, Mr. Swearengen, and have a care in leaving town. For all of his personal distaste for the victim, the Chief will be expected to make vigorous inquiry.”  
  
He paused at the door, opening the smaller envelope, pulled out a bill. He spoke without looking directly at her.  
  
“That picture of her in your whore-book? How ‘bout seein’ if a painter-type can paint some lace or the like over her parts, maybe stick the picture in a nice frame. It’d be something good, I think, givin’ people who knew her…something pretty to remember her by.”  
  
Her hand tightened around the bottle she held.  
  
“That’s a fine idea, Mr. Swearengen. I believe I’ll speak of that as Ava falls asleep.”   
  
He heard one soft sob as she passed, then the madam collected her composure and turned towards the hidden door and her niece.  
  
He took time to go by Dr. McDonald’s office to tell a rattled story about a patient’s extended treatment interrupted by an irate husband the day before, leading him to the conclusion that leaving town would be wise. Trixie was ready and waiting by the time he returned. Newsboys were calling out about the policeman’s murder as Al finished his dealings with the First Bank of Denver and pointed his hired wagon towards Nevada and Virginia City, Trixie by his side. They finally had a decent stake, and Virginia City had the Comstock mine, worked by thirsty, horny miners.   
  
Things were looking up.


	3. Twisted Way of Protection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al and Trixie's journey West continues. Al leaves Trixie to work in a reputable enough joint in Virginia City, while he takes a quick trip back to Chicago for girls. A figure from his past needs his special brand of chivalry.

 

    

**Virginia City**

  
  
_I don't know who I am anymore._

Trixie looked out the plate-glass window and idly watched the townspeople walk by in the dusty street, afternoon sun illuminating swirls of dirt and ash. More precisely, she didn’t know  _what_ she was, without Al by her side acting as her touchstone.   
  
 _Six weeks_ , he had said.  _Maybe less_. He was on the road somewhere, and she was stuck in a second-rate saloon turning second-rate tricks. If not for the cigarettes and dope, Trixie thought she would be mad from boredom by now. She figured if she focused on the boredom enough, maybe it wouldn’t let any niggling fears slip through the cracks. Killing fear seemed to use up dope twice as fast, and she couldn’t afford that now.  
  
A man so filthy from the mines she couldn’t tell his age gave her the eye through the big front window. She cut her eyes back to the interior of the dingy joint and lit up again, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he made a face and walked past the front door.   
  
Some early mornings as she tried to get some sleep, she thought she’d never get the taste of mineshaft dirt out of her mouth. Even the ones who washed first seemed to have a dank, bitter smell embedded into their skin. She tried to think of the last man she’d serviced who’d been in a suit, and thought it might have been the week before they left Denver.   
  
Al, that son-of-a-bitch, had introduced her to the middle-aged madam who ran the whores here, told the woman to treat her right, made a big fuckin’ show like Trixie meant something to him. She knocked the ash off her smoke, not wiling right that second to give him any credit that he might have been telling the truth.  _Fucker knows everything,_  she thought.  _How’d the madam’s ill health get by him?_  
  
He’d been gone three weeks when the madam, Daisy something, had started throwing up blood. He’d been gone four weeks when they buried her. Her weak-chinned son, Elijah, was trying to run the tables, bar, and girls, and generally making a mess of things.   
  
Trixie was no card sharp, but she could tell there was slick dealing going on, money draining out of the house coffers. Typical amateur, instead of cleaning up the card dealers, he raised the house cut of the girls’ earnings to make back the money. Went the easy way, messed with the girls’ money instead of the men he likely feared would beat him if he challenged their tally.   
  
 _Al’s all kinds of a bastard, but he can keep his people in line,_  she thought.  _Most times, even me_. She stubbed out her cigarette and ducked into the kitchen, finding a quiet corner to do a hit before starting again.   
  
Bottle back in her pocket, she pulled the neckline of her stained linen blouse down enough to show off the goods as she floated back into the main saloon and looked for her next trick. As she went down on her knees by a back corner table, blonde hair hiding her narrow face, her breath caught in her throat from the smell coming off of the man’s rank clothes. She wondered what kind of an afternoon Al was having, and hoped he was at least a little bit miserable.  


  
**Chicago**

  
  
He wished he had a rational reason to just go ahead and cut her throat, the fat waddling she-pimp who stood before him, vacillating between avarice and fear. She was not being quite enough of an impediment that he could make such a move seem practical, as yet. He’d be almost embarrassed to admit that he’d wanted to do that very thing for over thirty years, and was only now seriously considering slicing her from ear to ear.   
  
Thoughts of delays and bloodstains had stayed his hand thus far. Maybe it would be enough, to let her keep seeing the blood lust in his eyes, letting her smell his sweat and anger as he stood closer than either of them found comfortable. He could see the pulse jump in her throat and found her anxiety calming.  
  
“Mr. Swearengen, you have to believe I was never going to put her in the poorhouse! I was just trying to motivate her to step a little quicker, give a little more effort to her chores. I’ve known Jewel since she was a babe, and I-“  
  
He leaned closer. She thought she could count every line in his slowly weathering face. She tried to move back but he had cornered her up against the wall a good five minutes ago. The old woman’s thin dirty hair was starting to mat with sweat, although the day was seasonably cool and pleasant.   
  
“So, knowing her from a babe, as you say, what was the reason that you thought, at this point of her life, she could be threatened into forgoing being a cripple? Had you seen her out on the town, kicking up her heels when she thought herself unobserved? Witnessed a moonlight jig, maybe?”   
  
He barely refrained from gritting his teeth as he spoke in a dead chilled tone. “What was it, Mrs. Anderson? Did her halting step offend your ears? Did her twisted hand cause her to spill tea on your Sunday dress? “  
  
A mocking imitation of concern came over his features as he folded his hands in front of him like a concerned clergyman. “I’m just…trying to understand the truth of the matter."  
  
He let her rattle on with excuses while he reflected on the probable reasons. He wouldn’t be surprised if Jewel  _had_ been slowing down some, compared to the quickness with which she had moved when younger, in spite of her infirmities. She’d had sand aplenty when she was a scrappy little cripple in the orphanage building. Once or twice, a young teen-aged Al had had to sort out a backyard bully bent on making her cry, but for the most part, Jewel would hold her own as best she could, surprising strength in her twisted frame.  
  
No, more likely she had seen or heard something she shouldn’t have, disappearing into the background as all good servants do around company. Seen a pillar of the community buying a young orphan boy from Mrs. Anderson, or some such. The damnable irony was that Jewel would most likely keep the real reason to herself, even if she couldn’t hide her distress over being sent to the city poorhouse, or her relief at seeing her old rescuer, all grown up and emanating a subtle but deadly menace.  
  
He had just finished making his mental selection of two whores out of ten presented, girls who would be the starting stock for his planed Virginia City saloon. Pretty, and sturdy-looking, likely to be good earners for a mining town. He had been calculating the cost when he heard a soft slurred voice behind him.  
  
“Al! Is that really you?” He had turned, smiling, to greet her, one of the few people who held a pleasant childhood memory for him. Then he realized she had been crying. He had moved into the kitchen to talk with her privately, away from the pitying looks of the whores.  
  
“Yeah, Jewel, it’s me.” He searched her face. “What’s wrong? I haven’t seen you like this since Billy Arnold stuck you in the fork of that tree.”  
  
He smiled at the memory of the beating he had given Billy over that. Jewel had just been learning to bake then, and had haltingly made her way to his room, dragging her bad leg. She had given him a sliver of fresh-baked gingerbread as thanks, hiding it in her apron from the other boys and presenting it with shy pride. That memory made her current distress bite into him even deeper.   
  
She had explained in trembling awkward words. Mrs. Anderson had told her the week before that she was going to have to move to the city poorhouse by the end of the month. To make room for someone whole and sound, Mrs. Anderson had told her, someone who could give a good day’s work. Her words became stronger and harsher the longer she talked.  
  
He felt obligated to tell her something of his long-term plans and the hardships that might come with them, before he offered any options. The next couple of years, maybe longer, would not be easy. Or particularly safe.  
  
“It’s a rough place, Jewel, and I’ve a mind to set up for good in a place even rougher and wilder that Virginia City. You understand, it won’t be like living here, with streets and stores and such.”  
  
She had snorted at that. “Wherever you go, you’re going to be selling pussy and liquor, right?”   
  
“Yes,” he said gravely. “And most likely games of chance.”  
  
She had dried her eyes as she made her pitch. “And whores, barmen, and dealers…they all gotta eat, right? Have their piss-pots and spittoons emptied out, their rooms tidied?”  
  
“Assuming they have rooms and not just a corner of a tent, yes.”  
  
She had become serious then. “I can do this, Al. Keep me from what that bitch is planning for me, and I’ll do whatever you want.” She had grinned, then, looking for a second like the spunky mischievous child she had once been. “You need me to, I’ll sell pussy to them that can’t pay for a regular girl. I can earn my fucking keep.”   
  
He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He turned towards the eavesdropping whores. “Help Jewel get her stuff together. She’s coming with us.”

    

 

 

 


	4. Road to Virginia City...and Dan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way back to Virginia City, Al turns an ill-fated robbery into a recruitment, as Dan Dority makes the most fateful choice of his life

 

    

**Somewhere on a west-bound road**

  
The swaying of the stagecoach was putting the two whores to sleep, the redhead Wanda snoring softly as she leaned up against Dolly’s shoulder, curling into her plump side as she dozed. Jewel was tired and uncomfortable, squirming in an attempt to find a comfortable position, using her hands to move her bad leg from time to time. Heavy damp-smelling woolen lap blankets had been handed out by the driver when they started out. The driver was almost positive they’d be in Virginia City before any serious snow. Al breathed in the cold heavy air that had a moist tang to it and hoped the driver and he shared the same idea of “serious”.  
  
He sat straight-legged in his seat, twitching the window curtain to one side now and then to look at the fading sunlight against the surrounding landscape of rocks and forest. He had hoped the driver could get them to a decent-sized town before nightfall, but he was now starting to have his doubts. A muscle in his jaw twitched; as the day faded, so had the traffic on the stage road. The last wagon traveling near them had turned north two hours ago, leaving them alone. He itched to be up beside the driver, seeing for himself what lay ahead on the road, but two returning miners held the front and rear outside seats, wrapped up in buffalo skins to withstand the chill.  
  
That’s what they had said they were, anyways. They were stiff-necked as he introduced himself, and didn’t spare extra glances for the girls—unusual for mining types. Newish-looking saddlebags had been thrown into an inside compartment under the coach floor before they started loading up the top with crates and bundles of pickaxes, sledgehammers, and other supplies. Taciturn types, their posture and manner just a fraction different from miners he had met before leaving Virginia City.  _Maybe bosses instead of miners_ , he thought, as he tried again to stretch out the ache in his lower back.  
  
Jewel had finally gotten comfortable enough to stay in one spot on the seat, stiff leg stuck out in front of her, her head falling against the side of the coach. Al checked his watch and the window again. Another thirty minutes and they’d be in twilight; he could see a sliver of moon already in the cold sky on the horizon. The coach started swaying as it went into a sharp turn. Al figured he’d wait until they were set straight on the road again and then ask the driver when the hell he thought they’d get to a town. He braced himself against the heavy list when the sudden stop threw him backward.  
  
All three women were jolted awake by the sharp jerk. Each one became fully aware that they weren’t moving, yet Al hadn’t started telling them to get their things together. They all became still and quiet, eyes on him. They watched as he eased the side of his window curtain back, listening to voices outside. He could make out two men on horseback, at least one other man standing in the road. There was enough light left to see that all were armed, a rifle pointed at each miner and the driver.  
  
“We ain’t looking to hurt nobody. Just start throwing down your strongbox and we’ll go from there.” No argument from the driver, but he could hear sharp whispers from the miners.  
  
“Everybody out here, now.”  
  
The man on foot flung open the coach door while Al put on his most cooperative face, hands where they could be seen.  
  
“Take it easy, pal. It’s just three ladies and me in here, and I ain’t trying to be no fuckin’ hero.”  
  
Heavy wool scarves were over the men’s faces, leaving only their eyes and the bridge of their noses visible. He glanced at each of them, careful not to let his eyes stay on anyone too long. A scrawny jittery-looking man on a bay was gesturing to the driver with a shotgun. He figured the other had gone to the back to keep a gun on the miners. Dolly started breathing hard enough for him to hear.  
  
“Calm down, girls. They’re just here to rob the coach, nobody’s looking to hurt you.”  
  
Brown eyes squinting against the cold showed over the scarf of the man in front of him. B _astard’s built like a fucking bear,_ he thought.  _Reminds me of somebody._  
  
“Y’all go ahead and get out. Come on, now.”  
  
 _Sounds like a country drawl, maybe Kentucky or Tennessee,_ Al thought. He moved closer to the big man.  
  
“That one’s a cripple. She’s gonna need a little more time to get down.”  
  
Brown eyes blinked at him then looked at Jewel. She had one hand on the door frame, trying to brace herself to get her good leg down first.   
  
"This might go faster if I help her.” Al waited for the big man’s nod before taking her by her waist and setting her on the ground. Dolly and Wanda got out and stood together, watching and waiting, trying to keep one of the heavy lap blankets across their shoulders. The man nodded at the women.  
  
“I ain’t asking nothing from y’all, ‘cept to stay right where you are.”  
  
He turned to Al. “You, keep your hands up. Now, give me whatever valuables you’re carrying.”  
  
Al sighed. “Well, which is it? Keep my hands in the air, or hand over my wallet?”   
  
"One of you girls, get his wallet out of his pocket and hand it here.”  
  
Dolly and Wanda looked at each other while Jewel frowned with her chin up, glaring at the big man.  
  
A soft whisper came from Dolly. “Mr. Swearengen, is it okay?”  
  
“Why the fuck you asking  _him_  for?  _I’m_  the goddamn robber!”  
  
Jewel stepped forward, ignoring the man’s gun. “Yeah, but  _he’s_  our goddamn boss!”  
  
Al just shrugged and met the man’s eyes. “Dolly, do what the man says.”  
  
The man’s eyes widened above the scarf. Al could almost see the pieces fitting together in the big man’s head, right before all hell broke loose.  
  
Al shoved the girls down low beside the stagecoach as the miners and the horsemen exchanged fire. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the air as the blasts made ears ring. The women huddled and squealed as they tried to make themselves as small as possible, wiggling underneath the coach. Al yanked Jewel away from the back wheel as the horses started to move against their gear, rocking the coach. He heard a heavy thud and saw the driver’s body hit the ground beside him. Blood gushed for a few seconds from what was left of his head. As Al’s ears cleared, he could hear the scrawny man screaming at the others.  
  
One of the miners fell off the other side of the coach as the other fired two pistol blasts towards the shooter on horseback.  
  
“Search the goddamn coach and get those banshees to shut the fuck up!” The scrawny robber fired over their heads, into the coach. He started screaming at the remaining miner.  
  
Al could see the brown-eyed man’s eyes jig back and forth between the shooter, the leader, and Al. He pulled his scarf down enough to show his face.  
  
“I know you from Nebraska.”  
  
“Yeah, the job in Lincoln. He fucking nuts?” Al nodded at the leader.  
  
“I ain’t known these boys long. Wasn’t supposed to go down like this. No killin’, ten percent of the payroll, he said.”  
  
The shooter, off his horse now, walked the miner to their side of the coach, bleeding from his side. The scrawny man started screaming again as he dismounted.  
  
“You was supposed to be carrying a goddamn payroll! I ain’t seen no fuckin’ payroll yet!”  
  
The wounded man yelled back as blood seeped around his fingers. “You got the fuckin’ strongbox!”  
  
“And it didn’t have no fuckin’ payroll in it! Not like I was told!” Spit flew from his mouth as he ranted. He grabbed Wanda from under the coach and dragged her out by her arm. “I’ll shoot her in the gut, you don’t tell me where it is!”  
  
The miner looked up, confused. “Go ahead. She’s no one to me and I don’t know anything about any other money.” He laid back with a groan.  
  
Al moved away from the body of the driver. His movement caught the big man’s attention. The man held still, trying to keep an eye on everything at once. Barely moving his lips, Al said quietly, “Twenty percent and whatever you get off the bodies, you back my play.”  
  
The big man glanced once at the crazed scrawny man as he switched his aim from Wanda’s stomach to the miner’s face, yelling at the other shooter to go through the bundles lashed to the top of the coach. He nodded.  
  
“Move forward and to the right.”  
  
The leader was screaming threats too loud to hear Al step up behind him. He jerked his head as metal touched his ear. Al pulled the trigger and he jerked again. He stood there, swaying on his feet as Al took his shotgun from his weakening hands.  
  
“Hey!” The other shooter left the luggage and grabbed for his gun. His eyes on Al and the pistol in his hand, he didn’t notice the big man now aiming at him, until he heard “Put it down, Joe.”  
  
“Dan, what the fuck are you doin’?”  
  
“Joe, put the fuckin’ gun down, now.”  
  
The scrawny man finally slumped to the ground, a surprised look on his face and a small hole behind his ear. Joe threw his gun down and slowly climbed off the coach.  
  
“Is Bobby killed? Is my brother dead?” His voice was shaking.  
  
Al threw the pistol he held over by Dan’s feet. “Joe, right? He’s goin’ quick, Joe. You got anything to say, best say it now." He held his hands up and stepped back from the dead man on the ground. Darkness coming on and wishful thinking had Joe seeing the rise and fall of his brother’s chest as he knelt by his side.  
  
“Bobby! It’s okay, Bobby! You’re gonna be—“ His voice turned to a guttural gurgling. Al laid Joe’s head down on Bobby’s chest, the blood from his throat covering both brothers. The air stilled, the brief silence only broken by the sniffles and gasps of the women.  
  
“Wanda! Dolly! Get the gear out to light a couple torches.”  
  
The two women looked away from the bloody site and rummaged in the driver’s box for torches, oil and matches. Dan had pulled his scarf off and slowly loosened his grip on his gun. He watched Al clean his blade on the back of Joe’s shirt. It felt natural, somehow, for him to follow Al’s crisp instructions on setting the lighted torches by the coach door.  
  
In the yellow glow, he could see the miner had passed out.  
  
“Check on the other guy.”  
  
Dan walked to the other side of the coach and saw the second miner, dead by the back wheel where he had fallen.  
  
“He’s gone.”  
  
“Here, hold this.” Al pulled up the lid to the compartment in the coach floor and handed Dan two saddlebags.  
  
“Payroll?”  
  
Al opened one by the light of the nearest torch. “Yeah, payroll.” Both bags were filled with gold coins and currency.  
  
“Girls, go ahead and get back inside.” Wanda and Dolly helped Jewel clamber back inside the coach, all three huddling together, waiting.  
  
“Looks like a fuckin’ battlefield out here.”  
  
Al looked up from the bags, looked at the carnage around them. “I’ve seen worse.”  
  
“Hell, so have I, but…Bobby said this’d be quick and easy, nobody’d get hurt, they’d just turn over the money.”  
  
“He the brains of the outfit?” He continued his methodical counting.  
  
“Like I said, I just got in with these boys.”  
  
“Any more, holdin’ back in the woods or the like?”  
  
“Naw, it’s just us. Them, I mean.”  
  
Al stopped counting and looked at Dan, firelight flickering over his face. “I recall tellin’ you, you needed to be more careful choosing your confederates.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure these boys was Union.”  
  
Al rolled his eyes. “I mean who you run with.”  
  
“So…what happens now?” The adrenalin had worn off, and both men looked weary in the torch light.  
  
“You know how to drive a stagecoach?”  
  
“I reckon, if it ain’t too different from a wagon.”  
  
“Looks like we’ll find out. You go search the bodies, see if they got anything worth takin’.”  
  
“Uh, Al…that one might not be dead yet.”  
  
Al sighed. “Well, help him the fuck along and search his pockets. I’d like to get a little further down the road before we stop for the night.”  
  
Dan nodded and started towards the downed “miner," most likely a courier for the mining company. Al saw a flash of blade in his hand and turned back to assessing the value of the coach’s cargo. When Dan came back, he handed Al the small gun used on Bobby.  
  
Al shook his head. “That ain’t mine. I can’t shoot worth shit, unless I’m right up on ‘em.”  
  
He nodded to the dead driver. “Took it off him, right before I made you my offer.” He patted his sheathed knife at his belt. “I’m more of a knife man.”  
  
Dan thought this through as he readied the horses. “What would you’ve done if I’d not wanted to back your play?”  
  
Al looked at him, eyes flat and stony in the darkness. “Best we didn’t have to find that out.”  
  
He opened the coach door. “Dan, this is Wanda, Dolly, and Jewel. I’m takin’ them to Virginia City, setting up a business there.”  
  
Dan doffed his battered leather hat. “Sorry we’re meetin’ under these circumstances.”  
  
“Girls, this is Dan…” He looked at the bearish-looking man.  
  
“Dority. Dan Dority.”  
  
“Ain’t he one of the robbers?” Jewel looked at him with suspicion.  
  
“And now he’s one of us. Somebody hand me a fuckin’ robe, huh? I don’t plan on freezing up there.” Dolly handed over a thick buffalo robe. Both men climbed up to the driver’s seat, torch lights on the sides illuminating the road just enough for a slow pace, and headed out. They were almost out of earshot when the coyotes started to howl.

    

 


	5. Eight Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al, Dan, and the rest return to Virginia City. Al finds Trixie in far different circumstances from which he left her, and all is far from well.
> 
> Warning: minor character suicide

**Virginia City**

 

  
It took eight weeks for Al and the others to get back to Virginia City. He could have done it in six, but a decent looking stagecoach with one driver and a motley-looking family appearing to be two daughters, their crippled mother, and their scholarly-looking father was so little threat as to be almost invisible. Few fellow travelers gave them a second look, other than to try and get around their slower pace.  
  
Which suited Al Swearengen just fine. Three times, twice on side roads not far off of the main, their coach was briefly noted, then dismissed as harmless by other travelers carrying goods and coin.   
  
The first two coaches had been sensible, handing over their cash and gold to the armed masked men by the crude roadblocks. Only the last robbery had turned violent. Handy with a gun and a blade, Al thought as he helped Dan load the last set of saddlebags and strong-box.  
  
“How much you think we got?”  
  
“We’ll tally up when we get to town, Dan. I’m ready to get off the road.”  _And the women are gettin’ jittery and contentious, which is getting’ fuckin’ tiresome._  
  
“Cheer up, girls. We’re almost home.” He relaxed into his seat as they made good time down the road. A brief stop for comfort and watering the horses, and they drove into Virginia City in time for supper, streets incredibly crowded, torches lighting up the main thoroughfare as the dark came on.  
  
“See that joint?" He pointed out the side window. "That’s where Trixie’s workin’ out of right now.”  
  
Jewel perked up at that. “Think she’ll remember me?”  
  
Al nodded tiredly. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she will. You’d been working in the kitchen for some time before I took her out of there.”  
  
Dan got the horses settled at the livery while Al arranged for two more rooms at the Silver Queen. The clerk wouldn’t meet his eyes.  
  
“Something wrong, pal?”  
  
“No sir. Just good to see you back, is all. Your lady friend’ll be glad to see you’re back, too.” The young man in his worn clerk’s suit looked at him with some trepidation.  
  
Al looked at him with flat eyes. “What do you mean?”  
  
The man began wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. “Been some changes over where she works, since Miss Daisy passed.”  
  
Al’s look darkened. “You're quickly comin' up on your last chance to explain yourself before I consider a more direct avenue."  
  
“The girl you…Miss Trixie…she looks like things went rough for her a time or two, is all.”  
  
“She dead?”  
  
“No sir!”  
  
“She hurt bad enough for you to call a doctor? Or the law?”  
  
“The young man began to sweat. “She didn’t say nothing about needing a doctor. Nor a lawman.”  
  
 _Cagey bastard's hiding something._  “Give me the fuckin’ keys and shut the fuck up unless you can think of something useful to say. But first, go bring me up a few bottles of whiskey.”  
  
He turned towards the stairs, leading the three women up to their rooms, Wanda and Dolly helping Jewel with the steps. Unlocking their door, next to his and Trixie’s rooms, he instructed them to start settling in.  
  
“Huh.” _Fuckin’ strange._  
  
He looked around his rooms. The place had a sour, stale smell. Remains of a meal at least three days old were on a side table, circled by lazy flies. No smell of soap or cigarettes was in the air. A pile of dirty women’s clothes were on the floor by the bed.  
  
He put up his loot where a prying eye would have to work some to find it, then locked the door behind him, meeting Dan on the stairs. “Stow your gear and come with me. Bring along whatever you best work with in a crowd.”  
  
Dan joined him at the foot of the stairs in minutes and they headed towards the saloon.  
  
“You go in and start looking for a blonde, about your age, slim, tits on the small side, wavy long hair. Pretty. Blue eyes. Looks like she’d bite your head off as soon as look at you. Find her, tell her I’m outside.”  
  
He watched Dan walk in, itching to be there himself. Still, if anything wrong was going on, he’d prefer the wrong-doer not spot him straight off. Time enough for that once he knew where she was.  
  
“I’ll be right back, ma’am. Need to take a piss first.” Al watched Dan’s broad-backed silhouette in the doorway.  
  
“Well?”  
  
“I think I seen her. She’s dressed fancier than the other girls, didn’t seem to be takin’ no tricks right this minute.” Dan looked uneasy, looking down and around Al.  
  
“But…?”  
  
“She got something wrong with her like your Jewel? Crippled some kind of way?”

The air seemed to thin out right then, it felt like to Dan.  
  
“Why do you ask?”  
  
Dan’s eyes darted back and forth between the saloon and the man next to him.  
  
“She’s movin’ kinda funny. Slow-like, kindly…stiff. She’s over by the back faro table.  
  
Al looked into the interior of the saloon, the hot dark air, scented with smoke, beer and whiskey, spilling out the door.  
  
“Keep close, and watch my fuckin’ back.”  
  
He took a deep breath and plastered a smile on his mug, then swung through the door. Keeping his eye on the bartender, he forced himself to not look around for Trixie.

 

*************

  
  
“Evening, my good man. Announce to Miss Daisy that Al Swearengen has returned to finish our business, and pour me a drink.”  
  
The bartender’s hand shook slightly as he poured out a shot. “Uh…Daisy took sick some weeks ago.”  
  
Al affected a concerned look. “I hope that good woman is doin’ better now.”  
  
“Um...I’m sorry to say she passed. Elijah’s running the place now.”  
  
“Elijah.” Al drew out the name, stroking his chin. “I don’t believe I’ve met him.”  
  
“Daisy’s son. Elijah Winters. He’s running the place now.” The bartender's expression was carefully neutral as he spoke.  
  
Al took a long, slow look around the business areas of the saloon.  _Not very fuckin’ well._  He noted the barkeep pocketing part of the bill in his apron. What looked to be a crooked card game was going on to his left. Hand signals were subtly thrown between players at dice.  
  
“Hey, handsome. Lookin’ for company?” He looked down at the petite blowsy whore at his side. He turned away from the room.  
  
“Always, honey. What’s a good time with you run?”  
  
She sidled closer. “Six, if you pay here where my boss can see. Four if you meet me out that side door when I take my break.”  
  
He forced a laugh. “You little devil.” He stroked her face. “Cuttin’ your boss outa the action, huh?”  
  
Her face grew hard. “He don’t take care of me, why should I play straight with him? Girl’s gotta look out for herself, right?” She softened again. “Don’t worry, sugar. He don’t really notice what’s going on out here. He’s all up in his new honey’s snatch.”  
  
He thought he heard a soft “God help her” under the girl’s breath.  
  
“Interesting. The new honey out on the floor?”  
  
“Just barely. That’s her in the back, by the office.“ She ran her hand up his leg.   
  
“Trust me, I’ll show you a better time than that one.” She leaned against him. Slipping her blouse down as enticement, she rubbed against him until he looked down. He saw greenish-yellow bruises shaped like fingertips above her breasts and around her nipples. Purplish ones, fresher, looked like teeth marks. He looked up at her, all flirtation gone.  
  
“What happened to you? Fuckin’ mauled, you look.”  
  
She twitched her blouse up, covering the marks. She looked away, oddly embarrassed for a saloon whore. “I was his old 'honey'.”  
  
She gave him a brittle smile. “See why I don’t much mind cuttin’ my boss out of his action? I got these for bein’ his favorite.”  
  
His hand itched to get to his blade. “Anybody watchin’ us?”  
  
“Nobody that matters.”  
  
He put six dollars on the bar, and put one hand on the girl's hip, turning her further away from the crowded room. “Act like you’re rubbing my prick.”  
  
As she moved closer, one hand hidden below the bar at his crotch, he palmed a tenner and put it in her hand. “Don’t look at the bill.”  
  
A couple of grinds against his thigh, and the tenner had disappeared under her clothes.  
  
He bent over as if to kiss her ear. “Wait a minute, then escort the new girl over to me.”  
  
She giggled and hugged him, mouth at his neck, whispering, “If something happens and the boss gets crazy, it’ll come down on me, he figures I had anything to do with it.” He could hear the fear in her voice.  
  
He staggered a bit as if the drink and the girl had put him off-balance, turning her in his arms so she was looking over his shoulder at the door. “See the bear-lookin’ man with the long hair? He’s with me. Your boss got anybody looks like him?”  
  
“Them that looked like that went to the joint west of town, didn’t want to work for him.”  
  
He looked down at the bruised whore, and brought his mouth near her ear again.   
  
“You think anything’s getting’ ready to jump, come find us at the Silver Queen Hotel.” She breathed against his cheek and he felt her nod against his skin.  
  
She grinned and said more loudly, “Whatever you want, sugar.” She moved out of his arms and made her way to the back tables.  
  
Al met Dan’s eyes through the open door and signaled him to be on the ready. When he turned back around, Trixie was almost in front of him. Her steps were unsteady and stiff. Her eyes widened as she saw him. There was no smile.  
  
“You took your sweet fuckin’ time gettin’ back.” Her voice was unsteady and thin.  
  
Her hair was arranged in curls on the top of her head, held with a few fake jeweled combs. Sparkly pendants and chains tangled over the high lace neck of her bodice. Her dress was a chocolate brown satin, at odds with her coloring and eyes. Snug sleeves covered her arms and dripped lace over her wrists.   
  
The finery was nothing like the other whores wore—nothing like any whore Al knew of would wear. Nothing like Trixie would have chosen for herself, either. Odd choices all around and completely unsuited, although it did not look like it had been cheap.  _What kind of a pimp covers up every square inch of a comely whore's skin?_  Then he thought of the petite girl's marks.  
  
“You go on over to that man at the door.”  
  
No argument or questioning came from her as she slowly moved towards Dan.  
  
“That one’s special.”  
  
He turned and looked at the pale pudgy man in front of him, scraggly beard growing out over a weak chin.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I mean, you want her, you have to make special arrangements with me.”  
  
"Oh? And you are…?”  
  
“Elijah Winters, owner. That’s one of my special girls.”  
  
“Winters…didn’t a Daisy Winters own this joint some time back?” Al kept his face bland as cream.  
  
“My mother, yes. She died a few months ago.”  
  
“Perhaps I misremember…I thought when I was in here eight weeks ago, she was fit as a fiddle. Fit enough to enter into a business arrangement with me. But you say she died a few months ago…I confess I’m...perplexed.” A smarter, more cautious man would have caught the dangerous tone underlying the words.

Elijah was neither.  
  
“Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it? The point is, anyone wanting that lady’s time has to make special, and expensive, arrangements through me personally.”  
  
Al made a subtle move with his right hand, his body blocking his actions from anyone looking in their direction.  
  
“I have another point. That would be the point resting on the biggest artery in your body below the waist. Move or call out and you’ll bleed out before anyone gets close enough to interfere."  
  
The bar stool behind the man kept him from pulling away easily. The cold dead stare, or perhaps his own inadequacies, kept him from calling out or fighting back, as droplets of sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip.  
  
“I paid good money to this establishment eight weeks ago for my principle whore to work out of this joint, splitting her take with the house, the house providin’ clientele and a safe fuckin’ environment.”  
  
He punctuated his words with little jabs of the point of his knife. “There should be a signed paper in your mother’s effects, along with the fee I paid.”  
  
“I…I know of no such—“ The pudgy man began sweating more profusely.  
  
“Stop talking, Elijah.”  
  
The man stood there, silent and reeking of fear.  
  
“I’m takin’ Trixie with me. Whether you find any papers or not is nothing to me. I’m putting my knife away…for now…and walkin’ out of here. You have anything else to say on this, come find me at the Silver Queen Hotel.” He looked around the room at the sullen whores and shady dealers and smiled.  
  
“Bring whoever you feel you might need to, to feel safe. Short of diggin’ up your mother, I mean.”  
  
He turned his back on the shaken man and walked out, fairly certain that the only person who would have been interested in being the man’s second was dead and buried. The stillness of the crowd seemed to confirm his thoughts. He caught a glimpse of the bruised petite whore, standing by the back hall with a watchful eye on her boss.  
  
Trixie was standing by Dan when he walked out, eyes dull as she looked up at him. Dan shot a worried look at Al. “She don’t look right, boss.”  
  
“No, she doesn’t. You watch behind me for any action coming out of that place.”  
  
Trixie winced when he put an arm around her waist to help her walk. When he tried to put her arm over his shoulder to take some of the weight off her feet, she gasped and closed her eyes. He dropped her arm and circled her waist again as they slowly made their way to the hotel.

 

********************

 

 

“Lay her down easy.”

Dan had had to carry her up the stairs, her eyes dull behind half-closed lids and leaking tears as he moved her. He gently laid her down on Al’s bed.

“You want me to call the others?”

“No, not yet. She’s already spooked enough.”

Dan wasn’t sure he’d call her dazed pain-ridden demeanor “spooked”, but he figured he’d let that alone for now.

“Well, you want my opinion, she’s high as all get-out.”

Al sighed. “She does like her laudanum.”

“That don’t look like a doper’s high to me. That looks like she got dosed by somebody for some kinda pain or injury.”

Al looked at the long-haired brutish man. “What do you know of medicine and the like, that makes you have an opinion on every fuckin' thing havin' to do with the corporeal?"  
  
Dan drew back a bit with caution, not yet sure he was reading Al correctly.  “My Ma and my oldest sister were midwives, did other healin’ besides. Folks around us never had no real doctor. Seen a lot on our kitchen table, before I left out.”

“Huh." He shook away an image of Dan catching a newborn from between its mother's legs.  _Maybe a newborn calf..._  "Well, let’s get this get-up off her, see what we’re dealing with.” 

Trixie’s eyes remained glazed and unfocused while they worked, only moving to squint shut with pain a few times.

Taking her dress off revealed old and new bruises along her upper arms and neck, a few scattered along her shins. The two men looked at each other. Al turned his eyes back to her body, as if trying to memorize their color and shape. Dan took a respectful step back to allow Al room to remove her chemise and drawers. Al waved for Dan to continue as he held her hand while she whimpered.

“Holy Jesus, Christ a ’mighty.”

Trixie had bruising similar to the petite whore over her breasts and waist. Larger bruises, almost like sunbursts, colored her stomach.  He held her still as Dan gently turned her on her side.

“That motherless fuckin’ cunt,” Al swore as he saw her back. He was halfway expecting  whip marks or such, having run into flagellants a few times in his career and having no trouble imagining Winters catering to such.  But this wasn’t the work of a trick with that particular specialty. Arrayed on her back were bruises that looked to have come from fist or boot toe. Most were the brownish gray of old bruises on the fade.  His chest tightened as he realized she would've had to have been on the floor to have gotten some of the mottled marks, being kicked like a dog.

 _“_ You were gone so long.”

She was speaking in a low whisper, accusation and sadness intertwined in her tone. Her eyes stayed closed, her lashes sticky with drying tears.

He didn’t speak, but stroked her hair.

Dan fidgeted at her feet, uncertain how to proceed.

“What?” Al barked harsher than he realized.  

“Boss…I think she needs to have her…her privates seen to.”

Al closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again.  He looked at the expanse of skin that had been cream-colored with a sprinkling of freckles the last time he saw her. As bad as the bruising was, it was possible that wasn't the worst of it. She whimpered and he realized he was squeezing her hand harder than he thought.  
  
Loosening his grip, he looked at Dan.  “You know anything on that score?”

Dan’s face turned a shade ruddier. “I helped my Ma ‘n them a few times. I could get one of the girls…”

“Yes or no, Dan.  You got any experience doctoring snatch?”

He sighed. “I guess I can tell well enough if it’s something can be handled here, or if we need to go find a real doctor.”

“Go ahead then.” He pulled Trixie’s head closer to his chest, making soothing sounds when she gritted her teeth and gasped.

Dan got up twice to go get clean water from the washbasin and pitcher by the bed, tearing a sheet with his knife for clean cloths. He finally stood and washed his hands a last time. All embarrassment had left him as he touched her flesh with a clinical sympathy.

“Well?”

“She’s been used hard fore and aft, and not let to take care of herself like she should, looks like to me.  Don’t seem nothing's trying to infect, near as I can tell. Got a fair amount of bruising on her. All in all, the cocksucker who did this needs his balls tore off, but…I’ve seen worse. Not sayin’ she shouldn’t have a real doctor look at her, but what tears I did see are almost healed." He lowered his voice. "Don’t seem like she got a dose of nothing, far as that goes.”

Al looked at him with a new respect. “You've got a good hand on you for this. Good nature for it, too."

Dan gave him a look of alarm. “This ain’t my chosen line, if you’ve thoughts in that direction.”

“Still, good to know all your skills ain’t in one basket. Don’t worry yourself, Dan. I got plenty of use for your other skills and abilities, some of which I imagine I’ll ask you to use before the week is out.”

He laid Trixie back down, now looking to be in a more natural sleep.

“You don’t think she was high from her own volition?”

“You know her and I don’t, Al, but looks like to me somebody, probably that weak-chinned cocksucker, was givin’ her enough to work through the pain. She was dosing her own self, I’d have thought she’d been out of it all together. If I was her, I’d be hittin’ the dope hard enough to have trouble being upright at all.”

Dan finished drying his hands, thought about re-dressing her, then decided he had taken all the familiarities with this one he cared to. He wasn't sure what Al had meant by her bein' his "principle whore",  but he looked for all the world like a man wanting to rock a suffering child to sleep. Strange behavior for a pimp, and he doubted Al would appreciate Dan's bearing witness to that oddity. He heard a soft " _Thanks, Dan_ " as he closed the door behind him.

 

 

************************

  
  
He could tell she was awake. She tried to keep her breathing even and slow, but he could feel her heartbeat quicken, felt it through her back. He wasn’t sure how much she remembered of the previous day,or even if she knew where she was. Or who was behind her on the bed.  
  
“Trixie.” He saw her shoulders jerk at his voice but she stayed facing the far wall.  
  
He touched her shoulder. “Trixie, it’s me.” She jerked her shoulder away from his hand. He wasn’t sure what still hurt and was reluctant to pull her to face him. Sighing, he got up and went around to her side of the bed, kneeling by her head. Her eyes were open and still, no expression on her face.  
  
“Trixie.” He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes.  “You remember last night? You know where you are?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Trixie, I took you outa that joint last night.You’re back with me now.”  
  
She closed her eyes again. “You don’t matter,either.”

 

*********************************

 

  
She talked to Jewel some. She spoke to Dolly when she came into the room to help Jewel bring up a tray from the restaurant downstairs. She spoke to Wanda when Wanda brought her some dope.  She even spoke civilly to Dan when he diffidently asked if she wanted him to send for a doctor. All she had for Al were dead eyes and a still tongue.  
  
Al gave up for the time being and spent days at Daisy’s joint. By the end of the week, and with some help from Dan, Elijah Winters had agreed to turn over a substantial damage fee for Trixie and a weekly payment to Al for the privilege of keeping his guts on the inside of his skin.  
  
After their business was concluded, Dan administered a careful beating where the employees could see, going with maximum pain for the least physical damage done. He left Elijah more or less whole in body but cowed and fearful in spirit.  Not the least damage was Elijah seeing that all of his employees seemed content to stand back and watch the show, nodding appreciatively when Dan landed a particularly painful blow.  
  
The blowsy whore, Cora, seemed willing and able to take position as whore-mistress, with a small advance on her pay for clothes fitting her new station. She pointed out which dealers were redeemable and which would most likely try further graft. Only one of the latter elected to stay around after Elijah’s beating and getting a good look at Al’s management style, and he seemed likely to be working on a change of heart.  Before the end of that business day, Al was at the Virginia City branch of the Bank of California, making a hefty deposit from the silver, gold, and cash Elijah had turned over to him as the first installment on his on-going protection.  
  
Daisy’s saloon began returning to the quality it had exhibited when its owner had been alive. Dolly and Wanda worked evenings there under Cora’s supervision, Dan and a young Rebel boy named Johnny providing protection and muscle. Most nights, they never saw a sign that Elijah existed save for the occasional call for a bottle to be brought to his office.   
  
Al’s income from running a saloon, albeit at a distance, was bolstered by Dan’s forays in the night to rob lone miners and prospectors returning from the watering holes and brothels in town. Never more than two in a night, always one against one. Dan rarely had to end a man over the money he carried, his victims knowing that the next day would replace whatever was lost at gunpoint.   
  
Matters did not go so smoothly in Al’s rooms. Trixie was more lively, but he could tell steam was building up badly, with no bleeding off by action or word towards him. The big blow came on the fifth night he was back in town.

 

 

**********************

  
  
  
He had gone to bed as was his usual habit, lying on his back, Trixie’s back turned towards him. He didn’t try to talk to her that night; tired by the day’s work, frustrated by her lack of response to his attempts at talking, he lay silent and still. He heard rustling as she got out of bed and struck a match to light the oil lamp on her bedside table.  
  
 In the yellow lamp-light he saw her bend by the bed. His eyebrows rose as he watched her take a tiny purse gun out from under the mattress and aim it at his chest. Her hand was shaking, her lips tight with anger. It was the most emotion he’d seen from her since his return, and it was pointed straight at him.  
  
“You gonna tell me what this is about?”  
  
“You lying, deceiving son of a bitch.”  
  
He nodded at that. “Well, no argument there.  But specifically, what’s makin’ you hold a gun on me  _tonight?_ ”  
  
Her eyes were fairly throwing sparks off in fury.“You left me there to fuckin’ die, you pig-headed prick! Die alone and scared and not knowin’ why you did it.”  
  
“I didn’t know the old lady was poorly.” He spoke very calmly, relieved that she was finally talking, even if it had taken her pulling a gun on him to get things started.  
  
“You said  _six weeks_. You said it might be less. I kept holding on, every fuckin’ day thinkin’ 'today’s the day Al’s gonna come through that door and all this’ll stop.'”  
  
“Things got complicated in Chicago. And we got fuckin’ robbed along the way, almost got fuckin’ killed, so it ain’t like it was a bed of roses for me, either.”  
  
“You got robbed weeks ago, you fuckin’ Judas. Seems like you spent a good two weeks acting like road agents with a coachful of scared women.”  
  
His own temper was rising now. “Yeah, and the fuckin’ proceeds are lettin’ me take things easy on you while you get over whatever the fuck you need to get over.”  
  
She snorted. “Which, you didn’t know at the fuckin’ time in question, was my condition, so that don’t hold much water as an excuse.”  
  
He sighed. “So, what are you gonna do here, Trixie? Because I have to tell you, I  _will_  do what I need to, to keep you from getting close enough for that toy to do any mortal damage. Wounded, I can’t guarantee I won’t come back at you, you put me in any considerable pain. If I pass out, when Dan comes through the door, I won’t be able to stop him from puttin’ you down, then the girls and Jewel will be further distressed...”  
  
He could see her lip trembling as she held the gun with both hands to steady it. “You can’t imagine what I’ve been through.”  
  
Dark green eyes looked into icy blue ones. “I bet I can, if you’ll tell me what you suffered. I can imagine pretty fuckin’ well from how you looked the night I got you out of there. Tell me what you can, I’ll wager you that fuckin’ gun I can imagine your trials pretty fuckin’ accurately.”  
  
She took a deep breath, lowering the gun a fraction.  
  
“I missed my courses two weeks after you left. Started puking two weeks after that.”  
  
 He nodded. They’d been through this before.  
  
The gun was down by her side now.  “By that time, Daisy had passed and that cocksucker was in charge. First thing he did, he made the whores pay for their meals and the like.”  
  
“Out of the gross?”  
  
“Out of their portion, after the house cut.”  
  
He frowned. He was surprised the man had retained any whores at all. He remembered Cora’s suggestion that their fuck be off the books. He now understood her position.  
  
“Next thing to go was doctor visits. Said if we was sick, we could doctor ourselves or pay our own money for a doc.”  
  
“Had you enough for a midwife?” He remembered the marks on her stomach and thought he already knew the answer.  
  
She sat on the bed, her back to him, head bowed, still holding the gun in her lap.  
  
“By that time, between meals and laudanum, which I had to buy at premium from  _his_ fuckin’seller, I didn’t have a goddamn dime of my own. So…I went to him.”  
  
Her shoulders were stiff and tight, a slight tremble jerking through them. “He said he’d take care of it.”  
  
He thought he’d prefer taking a bullet in the shoulder rather than go through this account, but he owed her his attention. He knew the finish without her saying, hated saying the words out loud.  
  
“And he started beatin’ on you, to hurt you enough for you to lose it that way.” He touched her arm tentatively.  
  
She whirled up from the bed, tears streaking her face. All the terror and pain she had felt, lying on the floor taking punches to the belly, then kicks, bladder giving way, one of his men blocking the door and keeping her from getting up, came out in a poisonous stream of invective.  
  
The overpowering shame of not being able to help herself, the giving up, holding her arms over her face and head, were as vivid as the night it happened. She could still feel the final grief over the betrayal by the man who’d been her protector for years, knowing that she was completely alone, as she got to her feet, blood leaking out of her, dress soaked with urine, unable to stand up straight from the pain.  
  
The man at the door had laughed as she held onto a chair, then the desk, making her way out of the office, bright glow of shame all around her as she felt the stares of customers and workers. The weak-chinned bastard who’d beat her had looked at her with a mixture of interest and disturbing lust, like a child finding a strange new toy which he intended to make his favorite. What her words couldn’t convey was shown in her face and posture as she choked out her memories piece by piece.  
  
Al listened to the barely coherent account that got louder and more disjointed as she went on. He kept a watchful eye on her gun. He could tell her eyes weren’t seeing him; she was back in that office, that building, reliving what she’d been through. His face colored with his own shame as she talked.  
  
He stopped watching her gun hand as his own gut shuddered with memories of punches and restraining hands, of watching lust rise in the eyes of an assailant and knowing there would be no help for it. An old dread that came upon him so clear, he missed the movement of her hand, and the tiny gun hit him in the forehead before he could jerk away.  
  
  _"Fuck!"_  
  
He could feel blood dripping towards his eye as he looked at Trixie, bent over and arms wrapped around her shaking body, crying big gulping sobs. He swiped at his forehead and picked up the thrown gun, tucking it into the side table before he got out of bed and went to her.  She jerked as he put his arms around her, relaxing by tiny increments as he stood there, both swaying in a soothing rocking motion, calling each other foul names in gentle tones as they calmed themselves and each other down.  She was almost breathing normally when a heavy hand knocked at the door.

 

********************

  
  
“Boss? You okay?”  
  
Al left Trixie standing by the bed, arms wrapped around herself, and opened the door.   Dan’s bulk filled the space.  
  
“What the hell happened in here? I heard yellin’ and… _shit!_  You’re bleeding!  She did that?”  
  
“Just a scratch. We’ve been talkin’ through her stay with that cocksucker. Got all emotional on me.”  
  
Dan looked over Al’s shoulder at the uncertain-looking girl, rubbing her arms below the short sleeves of her nightshift, nose running, eyes red.  
  
“Looks like.”  _Couldn’t say he blamed her, after what he’d seen._  
  
Al moved Dan closer to the door, speaking softly. “I need you to run an errand. Go over to Daisy’s, ask to see Elijah.”  
  
“Want me to fuck him up bad, boss?” He sounded eager and frighteningly hopeful.  
  
“No. Give him a message and then leave immediately.”  
  
Dan gave him a puzzled look, then shrugged. “Okay. What’s the message?”  
  
“Tell him, “It was  _his_. He’ll be here first light to discuss it.” Then turn around and leave. Don’t make eye contact with the cocksucker.”  
  
“You mean she—“  
  
“I don’t mean nothin’ other than I’d have him told that, exactly how I described."  
  
Dan’s look of sympathy irritated him. “A statement doesn’t have to be factual to be effective, a truism that’s worked well for us both.  Now go on.”  
  
Dan nodded and backed out as Al shut the door.

 

*****************************

  
  
A small hand slipped into Al's. Trixie led him back to bed, sitting him down as she wiped the blood off his brow with a damp cloth.  
  
“The bleedin’ stopped.”  
  
She was calm but unsmiling.  
  
“You came back here some. To the hotel.” He said this as a statement, not a question.  
  
“Yeah, with him or one of his men.”  
  
“You ask anybody to help you?”  
  
She flared up at that. “You tryin’ to say it was my fault, I didn’t ask for help fuckin’ good enough?”  
  
“Didn’t mean that at all. But if you asked and were refused, I'd want to know about it.”  
  
She looked away. “I figured by then it’d make things worse. And if I’d asked and gotten told “No”…I couldn’t go through being let down.” She looked back at him. “ _Again._ ”  
  
“I take your point.” His gaze stayed steady, hiding how that last word had stung. He pushed her hand away and threw the bloodied cloth on the floor, standing up.  
  
“Take your nightgown off.”  
  
She untied the top ribbon and dropped her shift around her feet, eyes on his face.  
  
 _She deserves me being witness to her hurt while she’s awake_ ,he thought.  
  
He turned her this way and that, running his hands gently over her flanks and back, breasts and belly.  
  
“Faded right much since that first night I saw you.”  
  
“Jewel’s been makin’ me eat liver and God knows what else, to build up my healing, she says. Dolly’s been rubbin’ lotion on my back where I can't reach.”  
  
“All right.” He dropped his hand.  “Come back to bed.”  
  
She picked up her shift and held it in her hand.“On, or off?”  
  
She still looked small and solemn. He wondered for a moment why she was asking him, like she couldn’t make her own decisions about fuckin’ nightwear. Like she was afraid of getting it wrong.  
  
“Your choice, whatever suits you.”  
  
He lay down again as she blew out the light. She curled into his chest and stilled. He could tell by her skin's heat that she’d left her shift off. So much he wanted to tell her. So much he couldn’t, or wouldn’t say, not even for her. But he could say, maybe, enough to give some comfort.  
  
He spoke quietly, mouth by her ear. “You felt abandoned, bereft back there. Like the one person you thought you could count on had betrayed you, allowed you to be hurt. Maybe it got you thinkin’ they were the  _instrument_ of the hurt.”  
  
She nodded. She thought she felt his chest tighten under her cheek. She waited.  
  
“That’s a real bad fuckin’ feeling. Not much can beat that for pain.”  
  
She nodded again against his chest.  
  
“I’m not going to say “I’m sorry” or any kind of bullshit apology, as I’d not have you struggling with whether or not to forgive me, thinkin’ on the rights and wrongs of it all.”  
  
She grew still again. She could feel his heart beating slow and steady. She felt his chest hitch again.  
  
“I will tell you this. I believe people, includin’ you, can find their own way past something like this,  come out knowing the world and themselves more keenly because of it.”  
  
He could feel her eyes on him as she lifted her head in the darkness.  
  
“I don’t think I’ll ever trust you like I did before,” she whispered.  
  
He rubbed her back, careful to avoid the hurt places.  
  
“I know.”  
  
They lay silent for a minute.  
  
He took a deep breath, looking for the right words.  “I’d not have had this happen to you, had I a say in the matter.”  
  
“I know,” she echoed.  
  
He let himself enjoy the scent of her hair while he silently swore that he’d never let her down like this again. He couldn’t tell himself he’d keep her safe from harm, not with the life they lived, but…one of them living with abandonment sore in the gut was enough. He’d save her from that if he could, as best as he was able.

 

  
***********************

  
    
Down the street, Elijah Winters wiped his mouth from puking as the implications of Dan Dority’s message sank in.  
  
 _It was **his**. He’d be here at first light to discuss it._  
  
And the man wasn’t even able to look at him, like he was a worm-ridden corpse already in a box.   
  
Elijah was a born con and cheater, even though he wasn’t very good at it.  He called for a bottle, then another, as he sat there in his office, lamp unlit, chair facing east. He stroked the Colt like a cherished pet, smooth and cool against his fingers. When the first rays of sunrise came through the window, he felt a fleeting sense of triumph that he was cheating Swearengen out of his intended revenge. Then, oily barrel in his mouth, he squeezed the trigger, and ceased to feel anything at all.

 

  
**********************

 

  
Al thought he heard a faint “pop” in the distance, although it could have been imagination as false dawn faded into sunrise. He turned on his side, pulling Trixie in against him, and laid his arm over her side, hand resting on her stomach. Nose against the nape of her neck, he went back to sleep.  


 


	6. Virginia City, Carolina Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: As Trixie continues to try to recover in Virginia City, Al continues to recruit a young Rebel named Johnny for what will be the Gem gang. He meets up with an old friend to discuss a job on the side...and an old, dangerous flame is rekindled (Al/Jack Langrishe)

 

 

 

 

    

  
She should have been a good draw. Lithe legs, showing up to the thigh, nipped waist, a froth of lace barely covering pink nipples, and delicate features to boot. One by one, the free-spending men gravitated towards the blonde sitting with one foot hiked up on the edge of the opposite chair, their eyes glued to her one hand idly running up, then back down her inner thigh.

 

One by one, they shifted their eager eyes to the vacant blue ice in hers, then to her downturned mouth.  It was a good night for the other girls, as men sought their warmth even more eagerly after her chill.

 

A short plump woman, walking among the customers with a gracious smile here, a joking remark there, laid a soft hand on the blonde’s shoulder and leaned over to her ear. Trixie ran one hand over her eyes, then down her face, as the other woman guided her up from her perch and walked with her to the back room.  She murmured soothing sounds to the blonde as she shot a sharp look at the long-haired man at the bar, mouthing the words “too soon.”  The two women disappeared into the back room, door closing behind them.

 

 

********************

 

 

Al’s breath caught in his throat as the slender hand slipped into a side trouser pocket. Gently, lightly, fingers barely registering on skin…the cool open air of the cheap standing room tickets negated the heat from an eager palm. Progress seemed agonizingly slow; he could feel beads of sweat begin to form on his forehead.  He consciously slowed his breathing so that progress could continue with no one the wiser.

 

Fingers now moving up, up…he closed his eyes for a second. He wasn’t used to this, and the waiting on another’s fingers was agony. Almost, almost… _there_! He saw the shadow of a dark leather wallet slowly emerge from the mark’s pocket. He bit the inside of his cheek as he watched the ginger-haired youth continue to gently fish the wallet out, smoothly folding it into his palm. 

 

A few quick steps and the young man was at an alcove partially shielded by a huge potted fern.  Al slowed his breathing again as he imagined the young man opening the wallet, removing most of the bills, then folding it again. He twitched, chagrined, as the young man bumped into a large miner’s wife a few steps behind the mark, and actually excused himself to the cow, but he noted that the lad had kept his face turned down, cap covering his ginger hair. A careful dip and dodge, and the mostly emptied wallet lay at the mark’s feet, lighter at least by a hundred dollars.

 

“How was I, Mr.—"

 

“Not yet, Johnny. Follow me out the side, not too close.”

 

Al looked up at the night sky, praying for patience. The boy was willing, obedient, and thick as a stump. His soft Carolina accent marked him as a Rebel as soon as he opened his mouth, but it seemed his older brother’s post-war teachings on stealth had stuck. Or maybe he was just a natural-born thief. Small wonder he and his preacher father butted heads all the way out to the West territories.

 

They stood away from the crowd in front of the theater, heads together in the night air as Al critiqued the younger man’s technique and pocketed the money. Johnny couldn’t keep the grin off his face as Al divvied out praise for a decent job of pocket theft.

 

“I could do it a few more times, Mr. Swearengen. There’ll be lots of people here for a good while yet. Don’t those actor fellows always do a few turns at comin’ back on stage?”

 

“Those are called encores, Johnny, and I know folks’ll be here a while, but do you think one might start talking near another about how his wallet’s thinner than it was when he came in? Maybe get to comparing stories and the like?”

 

Johnny’s earnestness almost pained him to watch.  “Um…yes?”

 

“That’s right, Johnny. Tomorrow’s another night, hmm?”

 

Johnny looked puzzled, then his face cleared and he smiled at the swarthy man in the suit coat. “We keep low tonight, we can get some more tomorrow.”

 

“You got it,  Johnny.” He held back a sigh. “You go on back to Daisy’s, mind the girls there are behavin’ themselves, being nice to the customers.  You get some free time, practice on Dan.”

 

Johnny looked uneasy. “You mean, practice pickin’ Dan’s pocket? He ain’t gonna like that too good.”

 

Al took another step away from the boy. “Tell him he can punch you in the mouth every time he can tell you’re nickin’ him.”

 

Johnny looked crestfallen as he walked away after uttering a soft “yessir."

 

Al shook his head. He had no doubt Johnny would tell Dan exactly that.  Boy was honest in his own way, even if it was a challenge for him to hold two thoughts in his head at one time. Be a good chance to see how the two got along without his supervision, see if Johnny stuck it out, and if Dan showed enough sense to refrain from pummeling the kid.

 

He took a deep breath of night air and could swear he tasted money on the breeze. Banks fighting each other for depositors, the mines running three shifts, silver in the mud, dust, and air. If a handful of men hadn’t had a stranglehold on the big riches here, he thought he could be happy in Virginia City.

 

Crowd finally thinning, going off to saloons and ice cream parlors, he could make his way to an unobtrusive entrance far to the side of the more ornate main theater doors. He tapped twice, then slipped in with an ease borne of practice.

 

“Al!”

 

“Shh…keep it the fuck down, would you, Jack? There’s still a fuckin’ throng out there.”

 

The dimpled blonde-haired man frowned. “Is it against the law, now, for two old friends to say “hail fellow, well-met!” to one another?”

 

“I got some business going on tonight. Less notice, the better.”

 

The dandy waved his arm towards a small dressing room. “Let us retire away from prying eyes, then!”

 

Al walked into the actor’s small room. “Maybe if you quit acting like that, eyes wouldn’t pry so fuckin’ much. Ever think of that?” He shut the door behind them.

 

Jack Langrishe sat down, sweeping his caped coat out from under him first. Leaning an ankle on a knee, he smiled at his old friend as he reached for a bottle of apple brandy. “But then, I fear I would cease to be Jack Langrishe at all.”

 

Al handed him two glasses from the actor’s dressing table. “We wouldn’t want that.  So, pour me a fuckin’ drink and tell me how you’ve been, Jack.” He smiled and felt his tense shoulders and neck begin to relax as he breathed in the smell of apple brandy and greasepaint that had been Jack’s signature scent for as long as he‘d known him.

 

***********************

 

  The bottle was almost empty and Al’s throat was scratchy from the unaccustomed brandy and chatter. 

 

“Boy, I suspect we’ve started re-stirring the same pot of sorry stew. Let’s go on to matters not so tedious.”

 

“It ain’t tedious to make sure we’ve got a workin’ plan, won’t land either of us on the wrong side of swinging hemp.”

 

“Ah…the big boyos are doin’ the heavy liftin’ on this one. We… _you_ …have just the one small piece.”

 

Al rolled his glass between his palms. “And you’re sure I can’t use my usual methods for my small piece.”

 

The actor shook his head. “They were adamant about that, lad. Natural causes only, or the whole thing is buggered up.”

 

Al snorted.  ”They think it’s natural for a regular swimmer to drown in his usual swimming hole?”

 

“Springtime exuberance can make even well-used holes seem strange and foreign, as I recall.”

 

“Your fuckin’ banter won’t seem so delightfully risqué when we’re in front of a judge and jury, Jack. Can you fuckin’ focus for now?”

 

Jack dropped his jovial demeanor. “I mean, ya humorless prick, the spring run-offs are likely to create the risk of swifter currents and higher water than the bank officer is accustomed to. Which, if you’d get your head out of your arse, you’d see is a perfectly plausible explanation for why a regular swimmer might come to accidental harm.”

 

He poured the last of the brandy and drank half the shot. “”Absent, of course, any slashes in the throat area. I know you find it incredulous, but people  _do_ die other ways, you know.” He offered the last half of the shot to Al.

 

AL looked at the dark liquid for a few seconds,  then looked up at Jack. “I confess, I don’t like it. Don’t like a lot of people in on one job. But you say they’re good for the money. And the discretion.”

 

He downed the half-shot, apple and smoke lingering on his tongue. “Natural causes…” He shook his head.

 

Jack stood, taking the glass from his hand. “Oh, who’s to say he wouldn’t bump his noggin a time or two while fightin’ the current?”

 

Al rose, nodded, deep in thought. “Suffocating, I’m thinking, wouldn’t look that different from drowning, save for water in the lungs…”

 

Jack turned him into the even smaller sleeping space at the side of the small dressing room. “Which the good Samaritan, tryin’ to rescue the poor unfortunate, would have displaced from his lungs ere any medical attention was obtained.”

 

Al was still focused on the risks of the prospective job. “Is that really how it works? With the lungs, I mean?”

 

Jack briefly let go of the shirt placket he was unfastening. “I couldn’t say, but that’s what the doctor will opine, before he gets his cut.” His hand fell to belt and buttons.

 

“And our cut comes right off the top?”

 

“Our $5000 comes right off the top, yes.”  Shirts were shrugged off shoulders.

 

An unusually tentative note crept into Al’s voice. "You sure this is a good idea?”

 

He heard a soft “huff” as Jack blew out the lamp, the quick stink of coal oil in the air.

 

An apple brandy-scented hand grabbed his long black hair at the back of his head.

 

“Quite sure, lad. Now, would  _you_  fuckin’ focus, here?”

 

 

******************

 

 

Al’s warm, rough haze had lasted until he got back to Daisy’s joint.  Dan met him at the door, grinning widely, one arm slung around the Carolina boy’s shoulders.

 

“Al, this Rebel boy can take a hell of a good punch and come back for more.”

 

“Yeah, those boys are known for that. Not sayin’ that’s necessarily a virtue, mind. How’d it go?”

 

Johnny grinned through a blood-stained mouth.  At least at first glance, it looked like he had kept all his teeth. “Boss, he only got me the first time. I musta lifted his wallet three, four more times after that, and he never suspected a thing.”

 

Al raised his eyebrows at Dan over Johnny’s head. Dan gave a warning shake before he extolled Johnny’s pick-pocket abilities some more.

 

“Great, Johnny, great. Go get us a bottle, would you?”

 

He sat across a small table from Dan. “Well?”

 

Dan leaned forward. “Boss, if I hadn’t known you were schooling him in picking pockets, he woulda got by me at least twice. And that was  _after_  he told me you said I was to punch him in the mouth every time he didn’t get by me.”

 

Al laughed. “You’re not shittin’ me? He really told you I said that?”

 

Dan grinned again. “He’s a…a loyal little fucker, and he’s got heart, I’ll say that. Felt bad about bustin’ his mouth, but he was all over doing just like you told him to.”

 

Al watched Johnny get bottle and glasses, speak with a couple of girls, then make his way back to the table.

 

“How’s he seem with the girls?”

 

Dan thought for a minute. “He does okay. Treats ‘em polite, calls ‘em out on their bullshit if he needs to…you know, squabbling over who’s next, arguing in front of the customers.  I ain’t seen him hit one yet, but things just seem to…smooth out after he drawls at ‘em for a minute or so.”

 

Al relaxed back in his chair, feeling warm and loose for a change, as Johnny set the bottle and two glasses down, then turned back towards the bar.

 

“Johnny.”

 

“Yessir, boss?”

 

“Bring another glass and sit the fuck down, hmm?”

 

“You bet!” His grin was still blood-tinged but wide.

 

Al lowered his brows and shot a look at Dan. “You better be fuckin’ right about him, Dan.”

 

“You rather have a man smart as a whip but can’t be trusted?”

 

He sighed. “I guess if it’s a choice, I’ll take dumb as a stump and trustworthy. I expect you to look out for him as needed. And don’t hit him anymore, unless I tell you to.”

 

Johnny sat his glass down for Dan to pour him a shot. In the midst of the “huzzahs," Al heard Dan mumble 'it’s like kicking a puppy, anyways' as they brought Johnny Burns into their group.

    

 


	7. Virginia City: Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie works through the trauma of her ordeal with help from an unlikely source...and an old, dangerous habit comes back.

Cora appeared relaxed, half-reclining with elbows propped behind her on the polished bar, studying the room. The subtle jerking at the hem of her satin skirt was the only movement that betrayed her anxiety, all of her worry relegated to one twitching foot.  The heel of her leather boot clicked over and over against the wooden leg of the barstool next to her. Without turning around, she spoke to the young man behind the bar.  
  
“Time?”

“Twenty-five minutes, Miss Cora.”

Cora thought Johnny must have made a mental mark on the clock when Trixie had gone into a room with the older businessman.  She looked over the ginger-haired young Southerner.  _For all his apparent dimwittedness, he’s quick to calculate times and numbers when it comes to whore-running._

“Good. I can’t keep putting her out there, then pullin’ her off the floor when she gets balky. How’d she look when they went in?” Cora’s foot kept tapping as she talked.  

Johnny thought a minute, looking for the right words. “She looked like she was going pretty easy. She’d been talkin’ him up for a while before. Laughed a few times with Mr. Barstow before gettin’ down to business.” He returned to polishing the glass in his hands.

“Mr. Barstow seemed in a good mood?”

“Ain’t never seen him in a bad mood, Miss Cora. ‘Cept when he came here when Elijah was in charge.”

Cora nodded to herself. Elijah had drawn in some new faces, but his practices had sent more of their old customers to other joints. Mr. Barstow was of the brigade that seemed to be drifting back, drawn by the recent changes.  And possibly by her healing body…Mr. B had absented himself from Daisy’s since Cora had not been quick enough to turn down the lamp and he had seen her bruises. He’d tipped well that night, and she’d not seen him again until Elijah was dead.

She realized she was now tapping her foot to the rhythm of the piano instead of her inner anxiety. She scanned the room from one side to the other, calm returning as she noted the orderly way things were running tonight.  Liquor was flowing freely, as always, and her spot-checking of the till looked like the tallies were running true.  She pulled aside one of the girls and whispered an instruction. A few minutes later, she saw two dealers switch tables with no protest from them or their players.

A satisfied smile played over her face. The signs that this was a square house again were adding up. She ran her hand over her satin skirt again, feeling the lump of her hidden purse hanging from her waist.  Swearengen had his quirks, but he knew how to turn a profit with an eye towards the long run.

“Lookin’ for some company, Miss?”

She recognized the low rumble at her ear before turning her eyes to the man beside her.

“Lookin’ for a drink, and waiting on some good news _,_ Mister,” she teased.

Al smiled at the petite madam. “Johnny, two over here.”  He leaned up against the bar next to Cora.

“How’s tonight?”

“As you see. Tables look good, liquor and pussy are doing better than last night. We’re getting some of the old crowd back in, them that went elsewhere after Miss Daisy passed.”

He drank and ran a finger over his moustache. “Good crowd, that’s returning?”

“Yeah, freer-spending and not so quick with their fists.”

He looked into his glass, pointedly looking away from the whores’ rooms. “How’s she doing?”

Cora looked at his profile, trying again to suss out his feelings for the blonde whore.  “She’s doing better. She’s in with Mr. Barstow now. He’s a good gent, easy with the girls. Had no use for that cocksucker Miss Daisy spawned. “

“Point in his fuckin’ favor. Other girls touchy about her not takin’ her turn?”

She looked away. “Them that were lucky enough to not catch Elijah’s eye had sense enough to have a care for them that did. Nobody’s begrudgin’ her taking some time. Too busy counting their blessings.”

He nodded, then straightened as the door with the “Girl In” sign opened.

An older silver-haired man in a neat waistcoat and jacket came out. He smiled and said a few words of farewell to the smiling blonde whore in the doorway before she shut the door again.

“Mr. Barstow!” Al called across the crowded, buzzing saloon.

“You have the advantage, sir.” He made his way over, curious but no unease about him.

“Al Swearengen, Mr. Barstow. I’d like to buy you a drink.”

Mr. Barstow looked at Cora with a raised eyebrow. At her encouraging smile, he leaned against the bar and nodded.  “Appreciate that, sir. What’s the occasion?”

“Just trying to get to know my clientele, as I’m runnin’ things here for the time being.”

“Good luck to you, then. Not that you’ll need it to do better than the last one.”

“So I hear. How’d that one treat you, then?” Al nodded towards the closed door.

“Trixie? She was fine.” He examined Al’s face, looked at Cora, then back at Al. A wary look came into the older man’s clear brown eyes, then faded as Cora gave him a nod.

“She seemed a little cautious at first, but that may have been my perception, thinking on what some of the girls went through after Miss Daisy’s successor took over. After we started to get to know each other, she was everything a man could ask for, from a young lady offering company.”

Al smiled at the man’s courtly ways. Cora had chosen well at setting him to Trixie.

“Mr. Swearengen, may I ask what the outcome would have been, had I a complaint?”

Al shrugged. “Put her to other tasks and try again another day.”

Mr. Barstow nodded. “Humane, practical response.” He smiled at Cora. “Good to see this place is back in proper hands.” A shadow crossed over his face before he returned to his previous pleasant demeanor.

“You been a long-time customer?”

He smiled, remembering. “Indeed. I had not been here long, just barely hung out my shingle, when Daisy set up shop. I did a couple of contracts for her, my partner and I came here on many an evening…it was a good association for us both.” His smile faded. “It didn’t take more than one visit after her scoundrel son took over, for me and my associates to swear off Daisy’s.”

Cora ran a finger down his lapel. “But now you’ll be spreadin’ the good news, right, Mr. B?”

He held her finger lightly, stroking the top of her hand. “Absolutely. May I ask if you’ll be off the floor, as madam, Cora?”

She looked up at him under lowered eyelids. “I’d consider entertaining a few special gentlemen, Mr. B.  You, chief among them.”

He looked over at Al. “Nothing against Trixie, Mr. Swearengen. Cora…we’ve been acquainted for quite some time, and I’d give her my custom as long as she’ll see me.”

Al raised an eyebrow. “No problem, my good man. May I ask what drew you to Trixie tonight?”

The lawyer looked down at Cora. “She asked me to.” He looked back at Al. “Now, may I ask you a question, in private?”

“Over to the office, then.” The two men made their way through the crowd to the back office.

Once the door shut, Mr. Barstow started in. “I suspect that the legality of your running this place is somewhat up in the air.”

Al stood behind the oak desk. “You get right to the fuckin’ point, don’t you? How do you mean?”

The man ran his hand through his thick silver hair. “Forgive my abruptness. Things can move quickly in this town.” He straightened. “I suspect Daisy meant to change her will prior to her passing. She had asked for an appointment before I had to go back to Philadelphia for business. I meant to meet with her upon my return, but she had already passed, with her last will standing. Thus, Elijah,” he sighed.

“Elijah died intestate, with no next of kin that I know of. No one has filed for title, or new licenses. I personally think Cora will be a fine manager, but as far as I can tell, you’ve assumed ownership with no legal authority, which may be fine for a short period, but won’t pass muster when word gets out.”

“Yet no one challenges me when I deposit the contents of my till every day.”

Mr. Barstow sat, adjusting his pant legs to maintain the pressed seams.

“Which may very well continue, but not forever.”

“What if a will were found, leaving this joint to Cora?”

He looked puzzled. “I was Daisy Winters’  lawyer, and, as I said, she died before we could meet about that.”

Al leaned forward. “What if a will was found, done in her own hand, witnessed by two residents?   Prepared by her in your absence, hidden by her worthless son upon her death?”

“I…it would be unlikely.”

“Fuck “unlikely”. Would it pass? With your endorsement?”

Mr. Barstow leaned back, suspicion lighting his eyes. “Would not such a document leave the property to you, you acting as de facto owner already? You could prove an acquaintance with Miss Daisy, I’m sure.”

“I could, but that’s not to my purpose. Again, would such a will be valid?”

“Is it in her handwriting, recognizable by someone who knew her?”

“It will be in a hand you, as her attorney, will recognize as hers, unless you’re a goddamn fool who doesn’t care as much for Cora as you imply.  If this joint goes up for grabs, you think there’s any fucking chance Cora will be able to hang on to it, this comes to the big money’s attention?”

“I see,” he sighed. “I find the definitions of right and wrong shift, the further I get from Philadelphia. Or maybe…I’m just getting old.”

“I would hope some wisdom is coming along with age.”

Mr. Barstow stood. “I hope so, as well, Mr. Swearengen. Cora will give you directions to my office. Bring whatever written will you find first thing tomorrow.” He opened the door, then turned. “Just…make sure, at least, that the ink is dry.”

 

 

**************************

 

 

A few minutes later, Al called a brusque “Yeah!” to a soft knock on the door.

“What was all that?” Trixie slipped into the office.

Al paused before speaking, carefully looking over his girl. Her visible bruises were gone, her arms bare and her chest showing down to her nipples. She had given the fripperies she had worn to Dolly, dressing for the evening’s work in a white cotton petticoat and tan brocade corset. Her shawl, thrown over one shoulder in the heated saloon, was crocheted in shades of cream and tan. Her red stockings were the sole splash of color in her garments, keeping her from looking like a half-dressed innocent.

“She speaks! She shows curiosity!”  He looked up at her, mouth between smile and smirk.

“Fuck you, Al. Guy goes from my pussy to your ear, I wonder what’s going on, is all.”

“No worries, Trixie. He gave you a favorable report. Sounds like you’re back in play.”

She pulled a cigarette from her bodice, holding her hand out for a match.  He struck one from the box on the desk and held it out to her.  She held his hand steady and lit up, taking a deep drag.

“He was a nice guy. Cora said he’d be mindful of my injuries.”

“You blow him, or give him a ride?”

She tapped the ashes off the end of her smoke. “Both. It ending with fucking, as I imagine that’s your main fuckin’ question.”

He looked relieved. “So…you okay? Everything back in workin’ order, on your end?”

She looked at the tip of her cigarette. “I find myself wondering why you don’t already know that, given that I’m sleeping next to you every night.”

“Didn’t want any ill will entering into the matter, maybe givin’ you the idea you’re less ready than you are.”

She smirked. “So, instead of fuckin’ you, better I start out again with a  _nice_  guy? That your point?”

His face clouded over. “You fuckin’  _sound_  back to your old self. See if you can earn your day’s keep between now and midnight, you being so fuckin’ fully recovered.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and stood. “Okay if I ask your boy Dan to find me some dope while I take the next one?”

“Yeah, tell him I said it was okay.” He turned back towards the books that had been left a mess by Elijah.

“Oh, and Trixie?”

She paused at the door.

“Moderation, huh?  I got a busy morning and I’ll want my prick sucked when you get in. Don’t get too fuckin’ high.”

She turned so he wouldn’t see her fleeting sneer.  “You’re the boss, Al.”  She tugged her shawl over her other shoulder.

_You’re the fuckin’ boss._

 


	8. Virginia City: Feeling, Fleeing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al does what he does best...with a twist that leaves him ill at ease. Fortunately, Trixie is handy. 
> 
> So is her bottle of laudanum.

  
_There’ll be a clandestine meeting with Jack tonight, mayhap roaming rough hands in a dark back room, to take the edge off the day_ , he thought, as he crouched on the riverbank, ready to finish his task. The sooner finished, the sooner he could be warmed by the solid feel of gold in his pocket.  
  
The man at his feet had stopped moving at least three minutes ago. Al now concentrated on seeking a pulse, looking for any movement in the chest.  The man was still as the grave.  
  
It had been a shock, that the man’s eyes had remained open after all breath had left his body. Al had imagined suffocation would be more like sleep. Instead, the man had clawed and arched, his face remaining under the thick flannel cloth. A bloodless death, somehow more ghastly than death by the bloody draw of a blade.  
  
Al had put out a hand to close the eyes, then stopped. He had no idea if a drowned man would have open or closed eyes.  _Fuck it…let the river bury the details,_  he thought.  
  
He did a quick check for blood or flesh under the nails, then thought again of the river. He had chosen a likely spot, where the water turned to froth and the current looked swift and strong. It had gone quickly. The poor sap never saw the heavy driftwood that laid him out long enough for a quick drag through the bushes and a speedy undressing down to his swimming suit.  
  
Al wondered what offense the man had given, that such a handsome sum was put up for his murder. He considered the undercurrents of Virginia City and decided no offense was necessary at all, other than the man must have stood between power and profit.  
  
The man’s wrists were cooling quickly. Al grabbed them and began pulling.  A few short steps and a final push, and the man was face down In the water, riding along the current. The knock to his head had not had time to swell before Al’s flannel had stopped his breath and his heartbeat.  
  
Watching the body catch briefly against an exposed root, he could see no obvious signs of foul play. Whether a doctor would or not…he figured that would depend in part on who was paying the doctor’s fee. It had sounded like enough was being spent in that area to ensure a conclusion of accidental death.  
  
The body slipped free of the root and floated on down river. Al watched until it was out of sight and then walked back to town, fingers itching in anticipation of his fee.

  
  
******************

  
  
“Where the fuck have you been? What time is it?” Trixie propped up on one elbow as he unlocked the door and came into the room. She yawned as she watched him take his strong-box out of the closet.  
  
“It’s early yet. Go back to sleep if you like.” He turned his back to her as he took out the small sack of gold and bills and stowed them away.  
  
Trixie stretched while she yawned again. Her thin body looked almost lush to him as she flexed and curled under the blankets. He paused as he unbuttoned his shirt. Visions of pale cold skin came back to him, final struggles under his hands, a last gasping breath, and that endless wait for unwelcome signs of life. He thought of her heat, and her living pulse.  
  
“On second thought, go visit the water closet if you need to, then come back to bed.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow while she squirmed out from underneath the covers, clumsy from her last hit of laudanum before bed.  
  
“What?” His look was forbidding and hot. He could feel everything shriveled inside him from his morning beginning to unfurl again. He needed something to put up a final barrier between him and his work at the river. A morning fuck with no chatter would put away the feeling of waiting for that heartbeat.  
  
“I didn't say anything.” She slipped into the fancy water closet for an early morning piss.  
  
After washing her hands and face, she considered, then left off her night shift. She opened a small unlabeled jar Cora had given her and dabbed the oily cream between her legs. It had made her night considerably easier after she got back on the floor. Wouldn't do much for the ache in her muscles, but if he was quick, maybe she could catch a nap before work.  
  
Al was in bed when she returned, long underwear unsnapped and open, blankets thrown back.  
  
“Sure you wouldn't rather I give you a suck?”  
  
He grabbed her wrist, looked at it a moment, practically transfixed by the veins he imagined were humming under her warm skin.  
  
“No.” He didn't look up. “Over or under?”  
  
She could still feel the weight of bodies on top of her, from last night and nights in the past, making her struggle at times to get a deep breath.  
  
“Over, then.” She got up on the bed, straddling him, guiding him into her, the slick cream easing the way.  
  
She looked down. His eyes still held that dark, bloody look he got after a night spent at his other work. She wished she could see what he was looking for, when he looked at her like that. She began moving, lightly posting up and down, one hand balanced on his broad hairy chest. Most men looked at her tits when she was on top, either admiring or wishing they were bigger. Al, though... _he looks like he's staring right through my tits, tryin' to see my beating heart._  
  
His fingers dug into her hips, then opened and ran over her skin, drawing her heat into his hands.  
  
 _He looks so fuckin' needful today._  
  
He was beginning to be suffused with her warmth, low fire in his loins spreading out through his belly and chest. He was breathing harder now, images of the oddly unmarked dead man receding as he focused on the sensations his thrusting and her grinding produced. He looked up at her face. She was looking at him with a detached vague concern, faint practiced smile on her lips.  
  
He caught the sight of the bottle by her side of the bed. The level was lower than he would have liked.  
  
Blood running hotter now, he thrust hard up into her. “You awake, Trixie? You're not in some fuckin' dreamland?”  
  
She started, his harsh words and the sudden deep penetration focusing her with a jerk. “No, I'm on your fuckin' dick.” All traces of her dreamy half-smile were gone.  
  
“Go under, now.” He moved her with his body, hands holding her tight at the hips. She rocked her shoulders a couple of times to get comfortable before giving him a tentative look.  
  
“Can you...give me some breathin' room, Al? Go up a bit?”  
  
He nodded, but didn't move, wanting to keep the heat of her body on his chest. Finally he shifted back on his knees, bringing her with him, balancing her on his thighs.  
  
She startled again as his arms went around her back. Rare, for him to want this much contact. She looked into his eyes, less forbidding now, still solemn.  
  
Her smile returned as his movement began stirring more pleasurable feelings within her body. She ran her hands down his back, his arms, feeling the muscles hard under smooth skin and coarse black hair.  
  
“No whore's tricks, now,” he cautioned.  
  
She moved against him. “No tricks.” She wondered briefly at his holding, almost cradling her, then gave her mind over to the feelings he was drawing.  
  
“You getting' enough air? Breathing okay?” He continued to hold her so he was off of her chest. He thought he would have to stop if she began gasping for air.  
  
“I'm good.” She smiled, taking some unexpected pleasure in being able to look into his eyes like this.  
  
The solemnity fell from his face then. The thin shining threads of the good that was between them, be they ever so fragile and few, began thrumming to their rhythm. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, one hand wound deep in her soft tangled hair. He fucked against the mental image of her lying still and cold, each deep glide into her warmth a reassurance of her living, breathing presence.  
  
A stray thought went through her mind: _Must be this new way of fuckin'_ , she thought, as the feelings built with her moving tight against his belly. A sweet, feathery orgasm ran shivering through her body as she gripped him tight, pulling his head harder against her neck.  
  
He stilled for a second, then pulled his head back, meeting her eyes. “Did you just... _come_?”  
  
He resumed a subtle movement, just enough to keep his edge, as he looked at her, her eyes half-closed and slumbrous.  
  
“I believe I did.”  
  
"Huh. Don't usually see that without being from your own hand or another's tongue.”  
  
“Ain't you the chatterbox this morning?” She leaned back on the bed, encouraging him to go deeper with her hips.  
  
He braced himself then, going hard into her heat for a minute before pouring himself into her, face back at her neck.  
  
She held him as he shuddered longer that usual, She heard murmured words through her hair.  
  
“What?”  
  
He got up abruptly, pulling himself from her warmth.  
  
"I said, 'I...like you bein' so...alive' and such.” He turned from her, thinking on the day's work, the business, the money in his strong-box. “You know, the fanciful shit people say when they're fuckin', as I'm sure you've heard your share.” He cleaned himself, began pulling on his clothes.  
  
 _Never heard all that...not from you,_  she thought.

 

************************************

 

  
Trixie gave herself a few minutes to mull over Al's odd words, came to no particular conclusion. She got up and went back into the water closet, and began a more thorough washing-up for the day. Her splashing and the heavy door muffled the sounds of men talking, boots hitting the floor, metal rattling. All her parts clean and ready again, face and teeth fresh, she came back into the room, then froze.  
  
 _Al, his clothes, his knife, boots...all gone._ The closet door stood open.  
  
She had just finished buttoning her daydress when she heard a heavy knock on the door.  
  
“Trixie! Open up!” A low rumble, sounding like big Dan.  
  
She opened the door, standing aside as he pushed in. “Dan? What the fuck...?”  
  
“Listen...Al had to get gone quick.” He looked back in the hallway. “There’s gonna be the law here any minute. Now, he was in here with you, all fuckin' night, all morning until a few minutes ago, never even left to go piss, right?”  
  
She nodded, worry running over her features.  
  
“Yeah, look like that, like you're worried about him, afraid they're here to tell you something happened to him.”  
  
“So where the fuck is he?”  
  
“Don't worry about that. I'm gonna go help him get out of town as soon as I get the others ready with their stories.”  
  
He caught the hint of a tear in her eye, looked at the tumbled bed, got the whiff of sex in the air. Her visible worry took on a new cast. _Looks like the boss got some forgiveness._  
  
Then he heard boot heels in the street outside, men talking about a body, a river.  
  
He came close to her ear. “We're meetin' up with him in Cheyenne, is the plan. And keep it to your goddamn self, you don't want to see him hanged.”  
  
She nodded, then looked back at the bed as Dan closed the door behind him. She mixed a new day's dose of laudanum as she heard boots on the stairs, composing his alibi as she drank.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: There have been liberties taken with this part. Although not named, the dead man is loosely based on a composite of a couple of the “Big Four” banking interests, principally William Ralston, the cashier of the bank of California, which opened a branch in Virginia City after the Comstock strike. After the bank failed as a result of various nefarious stock and price manipulations by the other members of the Big Four, he went for his morning swim in the San Francisco Bay (not a river near Virginia City) went out as far as he could, and drowned either from a stroke or suicide.
> 
> From the accounts of threats made by his competitors, hiring someone like Al to fake a drowning seemed quite in character of the Big Four.


	9. Culling the Deadwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Fall 1874: The Black Hills. Indian territory, illegal as hell for white men to claim property there. That doesn't stop Al and Dan from trying._

The trick, Al thought, was in the direction. As long as he could look east and see stumps, open space, and downed trees, he could find it in himself to add to the sight with one more felled tree, one more yard gained.   
  
Looking to the west, at the expanse below the ridge stretching  thick and black all the way to the darkening sky…that sight made Al want to turn tail and head back to cobblestone streets and brick buildings, until the thought of arrest warrants sweetened the current view.  
  
He wiped the sweat-soaked black hair out of his eyes and turned his back on all that still waited. The coming labor would be upon them soon enough.  Focus on the task at hand, that was the key, he thought.  _Cuttin’ throats or cuttin’ trees, man just had to keep his mind on the job, not get spooked by what still waited up ahead._  
  
“Dan! We fell one more, clean the scrub to that stump over there, and call it a day. Sound good?”  
  
The long-haired mountain man growled low in his throat.  _Sound good to never set sight on a goddamn fuckin’ tree again,_  he thought to himself.  “Yeah, I think I got about one more fuckin’ cut in me.”  
  
“You tiring on me, Dan? Gonna let an old man best you on the fuckin’ field of battle?”  
  
Al’s appearance belied his taunting tone. His hands, wrapped with flannel, were covered in weeping new blisters even as the old ones callused over. His shoulders and back throbbed like hell, underused muscles protesting mightily.  He kept hoping each morning would bring improvement, although sleep had been getting less comfortable night by night. There were times every part of his body felt like an aching tooth, dull constant pain with the occasional flash of sharp. He noticed, though, that he was lasting a little longer each day.  
  
Could have been worse, he thought.  Climate and weather, along with the scars of past wildfire, had cut a wide swathe through the forest.  A lot of the tall pines filling the gulch were just deadwood, dry and brittle, ready to fall after a couple of well-placed hatchet cuts and a few ax swings. The further they worked their way into the gulch, the easier it was to see how much progress they had made, if they looked right.  
  
Dan could hear Al’s breathing getting more ragged.  He felt bad now about complaining. Boss didn’t chatter about unnecessary shit like age, but he figured he was at least a good ten, fifteen years younger than Al. Dan was sick to death of the repetitious cutting, chopping , and felling, clearing out and starting over, but his body didn’t seem to mind as much as Al’s did.  
  
 _Reminds me of the good parts of home,_ he thought.  His bear-like body meant plenty of power went into each swing of his ax arm, each jerking haul of a trunk.  He still kept flannel wrapped around his hands, but he could tell the already thick skin was building leathery calluses against the ax handle.   
  
Not that Al lacked in strength. Their run-ins with the heathen dirt-worshipers were proof of that.  For a man not particularly large, he could put his wiry strength together with his fighting skills and bring down a savage in a one-on-one, as long as he was close enough to wield his knife.    
  
He’d never cleared a back forty acres, though, of buried rock and centuries of underground root, sun-up to sun-down. Dan had run from that shit as soon as he was old enough to throw in with road robbers, but the working, the fighting the land, had formed him into the man he was, as much as he had formed scrub land into pasture.  
  
“This ain’t no fuckin’ contest. Let’s just get the fucker down and hauled.”  
  
90 minutes later, axes freshly sharpened, they felled and hauled the last tree of the day. Dan gathered the axes and hatchets, setting to honing their blades to knife-blade sharpness again.  Al got coffee going over the campfire, cutting slices off a haunch of deer killed and cooked the day before.  Rough-ground meal, mixed with spring water and fat from the deer, was thrown into a black iron pan, cooking up to a semblance of a hoe-cake. The two men ate in silence, and thought of better meals.

  
  
********************

  
  
They saw white men every now and then, hard-looking folk not looking to make friends, wanting their own patch of land cleared enough for a tent and a fire. Most congregated closer to the streams, barely scraping out enough space for a bedroll and room to tie a mule. They came and went. Some stayed in the Black Hills forever, felled themselves by heathens, or greedy whites, or their own stupidity.   
  
Then there were the white men in blue and brass, talking of treaties and heathen ownership and rights.  Men of integrity, it seemed, immune to the rumors of gold in the steams and ridges, just waiting to make a man rich beyond imagining. A small detachment of General Crook’s men kept them on their toes, illegal squatters fading into the standing trees when the sound of horses and military men filled the air. The whites they found were chased out of Sioux land, Army guns at their backs.  
  
Al had started coming back from trips to the nearest trading post hauling bottles of liquor with more basic provisions. Here and there, white men had started making their way to the clearing, paying in coin or yellow dust for a shot from a grimy glass. A couple would wield an ax for a drink, the excitement of standing in an icy stream looking for gold glimmers having worn thin.  
  
The day General Crook came through a final time, he and his men scattered their campsite and gave them minutes to gather their gear at gunpoint and head back to more legal territory.  Al figured by then, he and Dan had cleared enough land for a fair number of miner’s tent sites. There was room as well for a couple of large tents offering liquor, pussy, and a few games of chance. The General could chase them back to Cheyenne, or Kingdom Come for that matter, but he couldn’t put the trees back up, or make the gold go away.  
  
Dan finished tying his gear to his mount that day, hiding the smile on his weary mug. He thought he’d started smelling snow the past two nights, and was ready to call it a season. The buckskin pouch of gold flakes and a nugget or two rubbed his skin under his shirt.  Three days before the first big snow, he and Al rode into Cheyenne, all hardened muscle, hunger, and plans.

 

 

**********************

 

  
   
Cheyenne swelled with would-be miners that winter.  
  
Stupid ones, gold-blind, struck out during lulls in the weather, giving too much credit to a handful of sunny winter days.  They would be found come spring.  Some would inspire tales to be told by the fireside one day, others would lay alone and forgotten. Smart ones read between the lines of the newspapers, gathered equipment, and bided their time until they had a chance to live long enough to dip their pans.  
  
Al and Dan had strode into the mid-sized saloon like conquering heroes, straight-standing and thick-muscled, their clothes stinking of dried sweat and forest dirt.  Al’s stomach was clenched against hearing how the others had fared in his absence. He’d not forgotten the wreckage he’d found last time.  
  
“We don’t allow savages in here, cocksucker.” Al turned to the red-faced saloon-keeper, white-haired  and grinning. The grin faded as the man took in the weathered, unsmiling face. “Sorry, Al…just makin’ a joke, is all. Drink?” He unconsciously moved back a step, wishing he’d kept quiet until the bar was between them.  
  
“Not in a jocular mood, Joe. But I will take that drink.” He leaned against the bar as Joe made his way around to pour. Dan downed his in a flash and started scanning the room until Al handed him a small pouch.   
  
“Go secure three rooms at the Warren Hotel down the way.  And get the location of the nearest decent bathhouse.”   
  
The white-haired man waited until Dan had cleared the door before speaking again, watching him part the crowd with his bulk.  
  
“Well, you look fit enough, Al. Pioneer life must suit you.”  
  
Al grimaced and downed his first shot out of the cleanest glass he’d seen in weeks.  
  
“Pioneer life can suck my dick. We worked our balls off, I can tell you that. Cocksucker Crooke and his men chased us out of the Hills last week, but we got a hell of a lot cleared.”  
  
Joe raised the bottle and an eyebrow. Al nodded and pushed his glass forward.  
  
“Hope you weren’t just making the red man’s way easier, doing their work for ‘em.”  
  
Al smirked at this. “They don’t seem interested in all that’s laying underfoot, just waiting to be picked up. Don’t like whites around their fucking sacred dead or shooting their game, but the heathens I saw up close didn’t show any signs of gold fever.”  
  
Joe chewed on that a second. “They say anything about gold deposits, yellow rocks or the like?’  
  
Al downed his second shot. “Ones I was close to were past talkin’.”  
  
“I need a bathhouse and a real bed,” he continued. “And news of my people. What can you tell me?”  
  
Joe poured for himself this time. “Johnny’s doing a good job as box herder. Gets more done with less violence than any box herder I’ve seen.  He can’t run a game worth shit, but he does fine with keeping the girls in line. I been giving him his split regular, like we said.”  
  
“Go on.” Al’s fingertips tapped with impatience on the stool beside him, out of Joe’s sight.  
  
Joe wondered if Al had had that killing stare, dead-eyed and hot at the same time, before he went to the Black Hills. It didn’t look new on him, but Swearengen was giving him a chill that he hadn’t before leaving out with Dority.   _Time in the Hills must’ve worn down whatever masked that look before_ , he thought.  
  
“Jewel…she tries hard, I can say that. If things get rushed…well, she’s a fuckin’ disaster, to tell the truth.”  
  
“Truth would be what I’m after, Joe.” The words were casual enough, the tone collegial. If Al hadn’t opened his barlow knife, and started digging reddish-brown flecks from under his fingernails as he spoke, Joe might’ve missed the implied threat.  
  
“Sure, Al. Anyways, I set her to workin’ in the kitchen, out of the way, like. Cook says it hurts her own hands to look at her work, but if she leaves her alone, there’s pots of cut potatoes, trimmed beans and the like when Cook’s ready for ‘em. Of a morning, she’ll put her hand to baking before the joint gets stirrin’. Same with cleaning.  Slow but gets it done, if nobody’s around to hinder her way.”  
  
“Earned her keep?”  
  
Joe nodded. “I’d say so. I’m willin’ to give back half what you paid me to watch after her.  
  
“And Dolly and Wanda are good girls, sweet-natured, got repeaters the first week. I’ve not seen ‘em be quarrelsome, or holdin’ money back, you know, like the sneaky ones’ll do. Dolly sucks cock like it was candy, times I’ve made use of her. And Wanda’s got some fuckin’ tricks about her, got the boys standing in line. Their cuts are in the safe, waiting on you.” Joe spun out the update as long as he was able, knowing he was talking too much, not looking forward to the conversation’s continuance.  
  
Al’s stomach tightened again. Joe mirrored his tense demeanor. Both knew there was one left to discuss.  
  
Al closed up his knife, clenching it in his fist, thumb still on the catch.  “And what of Trixie?”  
  
Joe raised the bottle to pour again, putting the bottle back down when a callused hand stilled his arm.  
  
“We’re done drinking for now, Joe. What of her?”  
  
Joe toyed with his bar rag. “She’s not been any trouble, really. Most of the time, she takes her turn without complaint.” He looked down, then at Al’s hooded eyes. “She can be a real pretty girl, when she’s cleaned up and got some color to her. I’d say…I’d say she’s earned her way okay. I got no complaints, Al. Her cut ain’t as big as the others, but it’s all there waitin’ for you.”  
  
Al opened his knife again, started cleaning his nails of his other hand, studying the knife point.  
  
“I suggest you cough up what you’re avoidin’ telling me, Joe.” His hot green eyes darkened as he looked back at Joe. “We neither of us’ll be happy if I have to go digging for it.”  
  
Joe could smell his own fear-sweat starting. Goddamnit, he wasn’t a fucking doctor or soul-saver. Girl was like she was when Al left her here.  
  
“Trixie…well, you know she hits laudanum regular-like.”  
  
“Yeah. I know. So?”  
  
There’s some stuff around town, mixed stronger than back east. Seems to hit the girls harder, the ones that use it.” He looked away.  “I had to let one girl go, her being insensible half the time. Before, though, she and Trixie seemed to take to each other.”  
  
Joe could hear his pulse in his ears through the silence.  
  
“Trixie’s earnings seemed to fall off after that.  Johnny…he’s not one for keeping up with numbers, but even he thought we should be seeing more coin off her.”  
  
“She was holding back on you? And you let her?”  Al kept the anger out of his voice, but his grip on the bar was white-knuckled.  
  
Joe wiped at his brow. “She’s got a sharp tongue on her when she’s mad. Said the last pimp that fucked with her, you…put down without lifting a finger. Said I’d find out the truth of that if I didn’t leave her be.”  
  
“So you let the whore set the rules.  _Jesus,_  Joe…is  _that_  how you run your joint?”  
  
“Al, I don’t want to get crossways with you…I’ve heard about Virginia City, here and there. She does work some…but most won’t go more than once. Guy last week said if he wanted to fuck a corpse he could go rob a grave and save his money.”  
  
Al shoved his knife in his pocket. “Tell all of ‘em to clean up and meet me over at the Warren in an hour. And I’ll take their cuts now.” Joe nodded, glad to escape for a few minutes to his office.  
  
He studied the back of a drooping blonde head at a table near the back.  The head would slowly drop, hair falling over the side of her face, still, then jerk back up, the drowsy whore trying to stay awake and not fully succeeding.  The space around her was empty, customers keeping clear of her.  She turned enough for him to see her profile, the sharp chin, the classic nose.  
  
He helped himself to the bottle on the bar as he waited for Joe, pouring into a larger glass this time. The whiskey roiled in his guts as pictures of another blond doper whore ran though his mind. A weathered wooden marker was close enough in his mind’s eye that he could feel the rough carved name under his fingers.  
  
A sharp “crack” and sudden pain in his right hand brought him back to the present. He shoved the shattered glass to one side, wrapping the bar rag around his bleeding palm as Joe lay the money pouch on the bar. He shoved it into his pocket next to his knife, called out “One hour, the Warren” as he headed for the door.  
  
Joe pulled another rag from underneath the bar, wiping up Al’s blood and the remaining glass shards. He was still looking at the nodding-off whore as Johnny came up behind him.  
  
“Jesus, Joe, what happened here?”  
  
“Your boss, Swearengen, wants you and your crew cleaned up and over to the Warren in an hour. Her, too.” He nodded at Trixie.  
  
“Okay…but what happened with the blood and all?”  
  
Joe sighed as he wiped. “Tell me something, Johnny…what about her could set a man to such anger that he’d bust a glass in his fighting hand, spilling his own blood, just lookin’ at her?”  
  
Johnny shook his head. “There’s been blood between ‘em before. They got years together, way before I set eyes on either of ‘em.”  He picked up a large shard of glass and turned it in the light, watching the light bounce off the sharp edges.  “I’ve seen him set his mind to killing them that hurt her, and I’ve seen the two of ‘em set straight at each other like bobcats.”  
  
He set the glass down and looked at Trixie, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think they’re just too fuckin’ much alike, some ways, to get along in peace.”  
  
He started rounding up Al’s folks, sending the girls to wash, giving instructions. He saved dealing with Trixie for last.  


 

**************************

 

  
They tried, mostly, to go about their days in industry and peace.  
  
Dan spent his time prospecting in the streets of Cheyenne, looking for a business strike that would set them through the winter. A nervous hotel manager told Al the gimp could do some sweeping and the like for three bits a day.  Johnny discreetly steered local gentlemen to Dolly and Wanda’s rooms two or three times an evening.  
  
They all tried to stay away from Al’s door when he and Trixie were at full tilt. If the hall was fairly quiet, anyone close could hear the swearing, the yelling, rising and falling in pitch as anger and guilt, blame and self-pity warred against each other.  Trixie would choke out vivid descriptions of what her body put her through when she tried to stop the laudanum. Al would growl back equally vivid descriptions of her mother’s laudanum-fueled slide to an early grave.  
  
They could stay locked in their unremitting combat for hours, seemed like. There’d be breaking glass, the slap of flesh on flesh, then one or the other would leave for a while. Sometimes there would be low murmuring, soft weeping, then silence.  The manager stopped offering the remaining rooms on that floor to guests.

 

***********************

  
   
“It’s a sweet deal, Al. Could get us through the winter, easy.” Dan tried to ignore the fresh scratches on his boss’s hands.  
  
Al glared though exhausted greyish eyes.  “Thought you understood I meant to be done with workin’ for others. “  
  
“Well, it ain’t hardly working for someone if he’s a thousand miles away, seems like.” Dan worried his hat rim as he spoke.  
  
“Spoken like a man who never had to take any part of his hard-earned money and ship it off to some cocksucker back east.”  
  
“He said ‘free rein, as long as there’s a profit’; them’s his exact words. Free fuckin’ rein, Al.”  
  
Al rolled his eyes. “How much fuckin’ profit you suppose there’s gonna be through the winter, hmm? How many people are following this asshole’s lead and getting to a warmer fuckin’ climate ‘til spring?"  
  
“Not meaning to argue, boss, but with the news comin’ out of the Hills about the French Creek find, folks are comin’ in as much as goin’ out, wantin’ to be close come first thaw.”  
  
Running a weary hand over his face, Al got to his feet. “Oh, hell, I’ll go look at it. Tell those cows to make up a place for the other one tonight in their room. Tell Johnny she’s to start takin’ her turn with the others, too.”  
  
“You sure that’s a good idea, boss? Seems like she still runs awful temperish.”  
  
Al curled his lip in a grim tight line. “Maybe a trick’ll fetch her more of a blow that I’ve been able to, knock some sense into her. She’s going down this path she’s hell-bent on travelin’, at least maybe I can get something out of it before it comes time to bury her.”  
  
He turned  away to get his coat, but Dan still saw the wave of pain roll over his face at that last.

  
   
***************************

  
  
“Jesus Christ, no wonder that cocksucker left town!” Al flung the pen down, disgusted by the books before him.  
  
Dan chuckled from the other side of the desk. “Leastways, you can tell him any damn thing you want to about profits and he’d not be able to gainsay it.”  
  
Al looked around the office that he guessed he could now call ‘his’.  Winter full on them and the hotel turning into hell on earth, he’d agreed to manage the saloon and sporting establishment while the owner headed back to warmer, and mayhap safer climes _.  Dude might have been good enough to run a joint back east, but the lawlessness and violence here_ …Al looked at the mangled books again and mentally retracted the thought of him being good enough to run anything. This mess was worse than what he'd found at Daisy's, as far as the bookkeeping part.  
  
“And it come with a decent stable, too, far as I can tell.” Most of the whores had stayed on, not much caring who sat in the upstairs office.  
  
Al looked at the books again and shook his head. “That one that left when he did must have been the one he was dippin’ his pen into, instead of his fuckin’ inkwell and keeping track of business.  I thought maybe I could go by last year’s orders, vendor’s invoices and the like, get some idea of runnin’ fuckin’ inventory, but there’s pages in here virgin as a fuckin’ nun.”  
  
Dan kept quiet. It worked against his sense of the rightness of things when Al, as much blood on his hands as he had, started talking like a fuckin’ accountant.  
  
“Look,” Al pointed his pen at him. “I want you to get up with some road agent types, start getting some deals together before the weather shuts that opportunity down.” Al went on to outline the bones of the thieveries, swindles, and schemes that would eventually provide a sizable piece of their income. Dan felt his world right itself again.

 

  
  
*********************

 

  
  
“So, how’s she doin’?”  
  
Johnny felt like he was back in school again, up close to the teacher’s desk, hoping hard he was close to the right answer. “She’s back down to the stuff that ain’t so strong, but it’s been hard on her. We ain’t gettin’ complaints or nothing, though.“  He looked at Al through guileless eyes. “I think she’s trying, as best she can. She’s back to the stuff from the doctor, not the stuff from Chink Alley.”  
  
Al nodded. He’d seen her out on the floor more, looking a little more… _human_  than when he’d come back from the Hills. Getting some of her prettiness back, talkin’ sensible, most of the time. The wild fighting and recrimination seemed to have worked its way out of her body like the smallpox plague would do if you were lucky.  
  
“Tell her I want her up here tonight, after she takes her last one.”  
  
Johnny kept what he hoped was a poker face as he nodded, too surprised to speak.

  
  
**************

  
  
He pulled back quickly. “Jesus, was your last trick a fuckin’ buffalo? Go wash up again.”  
  
Trixie shrugged and went to the washbasin. “Wasn’t no picnic for me, either. Said he’d been out herdin’ cattle for two weeks, wanted a piece of pussy before going back to the ranch.  Didn’t want to take time to visit the bathhouse.” She scrubbed as she talked.  
  
He had already gotten in bed by the time she finished. She stood, clean and naked by the side of the bed.  
  
“What do you want me to do?” Her voice was flatter than he remembered.  
  
He sighed and pulled the covers back. “Just come to bed and try not to snore. Maybe blow me in the morning…I still got ‘accounts receivable’ and the like running around in my head.”  
  
  
They lay there in the silent dark for a while. She was almost asleep, curled into his remembered warmth, when he spoke again.  
  
“Trixie?”  
  
“Hmm?” She reached out her hand towards him from habit, surprised when he shifted away.  
  
“Tell me why you do it.”  
  
She groaned. “Did you get me up here just to start shit?”  
  
“I’m serious. It’s a simple question, Trixie. Why? What does it do for you?”   
  
She turned on her back. “You been high before. You know what it’s like.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s like having a fuckin’ fever and havin’ a load on at the same time. So, what does that do for you?” His eyes glittered in the thin moonlight.  
  
“It ain’t like that for me. It’s like…the softest warm blanket around you, right when you’re as cold as you’ve ever been. Like it’s your mama puttin’ it around you.” She ignored the snort and continued.  
  
“It’s like….being in Heaven, but not being dead yet. Nothing hurts, I’ve not got any sadness…” her voice softened .”I can be whatever I can think…I can have a baby or two, pink and white and snuffling against my bosom. And a house…and I can be somebody’s wife, that ain’t been fucked by a thousand men, that can’t even imagine what that’s like.” He could hear her voice start to shake as he lay there, unmoving.  
  
“When I’m high, I can imagine that I come up with a Momma and a Pa, and never seen the inside of an orphanage or a whorehouse. Never got beat or kicked.” She turned towards him, hoping he might be close to the edge of understanding. “When I’m high, it’s like I’m floatin’ so far above all this, it’s like the high is what’s real, and my life…my life is the bad dream. And I can believe that, feel that…until it wears off.”   
  
She was quiet in the dark. “So…do you…understand, how it is, that I do what I do?”  
  
He lay rigid, teeth gritted, eyes on fire, forcing himself to cool down. Tried to tell himself that his taking her out of the orphanage when he did was the very thing that kept her now from seeing that he’d given her a better life, mostly, than what she would have had otherwise. Maybe she was honestly ignorant of how many like her were long dead by her age, insides rotten from disease and no doctor, arms tracked and scarred by dirty needles, murdered carelessly by bestial men.  
  
“Al? Did you hear me? I asked, did you understand, now?”  
  
He turned over, his back to her. “I understand I shouldn’t ever ask you any fuckin’ questions if I want to sleep before dawn.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“Yeah…yeah, I fuckin’ get it.  Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep. I got a busy day tomorrow.”  
  
She cursed him in her mind, imagining the sleek, cool glass bottle in her hand, heavy with dreams, as she fell into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed of the back alley path to Chinaman's Alley.  
   
   
   
   
 

  
 


	10. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Al manages a saloon in Cheyenne in while he waits to get back to Deadwood Gulch and establish a profitable mining camp. He works on developing a reputation that he's not a man to cross. 
> 
> _Warning: Depiction and reference to violence and minor original character death._

The shabby room was warm from the small stove and the heat rising from the crowded room below, but Paul felt a chill freezing the sweat that had started to trickle down his back when he got the summons.  
  
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Swearengen?” He stood just inside the doorway, unsure of what to do with his hands.  
  
“Yeah, Paul. Have a seat.” He turned to the big man standing at the edge of the room. “Dan, get the door.”  
  
Paul’s foot caught on the thin rug and he stumbled.  
  
“Steady, Paul. Don’t want to hurt yourself.”  The swarthy saloon-keeper’s concerned smile came nowhere near his eyes.  
  
“Sorry, Mr. Swearengen. I’m just—“  
  
Al moved closer. “What’re you sorry for, Paul?” He moved closer still. “Why’re you apologizing for a stumble, huh?”  He was now close enough for Paul to feel his breath on his face. “No harm done, right?”  
  
He waited a couple of beats, then moved back to his desk and sat.  He held the faro dealer’s eyes for a few more beats.  
  
“What’s wrong, Paul? You look nervous.”  
  
The sweating man, now gone pale, tried to gather himself.  “Nothing’s wrong, sir. I was just surprised you wanted to see me, is all.”  
  
“Why?” Al sat, unmoving.  
  
Paul glanced at Dan from the corner of his eye, but there was no clarification there.  
  
“Uh, sir…do you mean, why was I surprised, or why I thought you wanted to see me?”  
  
Al shrugged. “You tell me, Paul. Pick an inquiry and answer it. Your choice.” He slid a lower desk drawer open, looked at it, then looked back up at Paul.  
  
Paul’s face was starting to twist with confusion and fear.  
  
“Okay…I was surprised that you wanted to see me, because you don’t call folk up here much. “  
  
Al nodded gravely. “When do I call people up here, then, Paul?  In your opinion.”  
  
He thought he might still salvage this, if he had any luck. “When you got something for a body to do for you?”  
  
Al looked over at Dan, gave him a thoughtful look. “Man’s got a point, doesn’t he?”  
  
Dan stood light on the balls of his feet. “”If you say so, boss.”  
  
Al pulled out a bottle of whisky and a glass, poured for himself.  “You’re right, Paul. For example, I call one or the other of the girls up here when I want to be blown or fucked.”  
  
He looked at Paul over the rim of the glass. “You think that’s what I want now?”  
  
Paul shrank back against the chair, starting to panic in earnest.  “No, I—that’s not what I meant, I….”  
  
Al downed his shot, dropping the glass back to the table. “So, if you don’t think that’s what I meant, why’re you tryin’ to fuck me?”  
  
“Boss, I—“ he broke off in dread, watching Al get up and come to his side of the desk. Bracing himself for a punch, he didn’t see Al’s foot rake the chair legs until he found himself on the floor.  
  
“I got three faro dealers downstairs, all pullin’ in two hundred a night or more. Yet no matter what table you’re at, who you’re with, I never see more than one-sixty, one-seventy from you. Why is that, Paul?”  He rested one booted foot on Paul’s ankle, fragile in its cheap thin boot.  
“You fuckin’ me out of forty bucks a night?”  
  
Paul gritted his teeth against the pressure at his ankle. “Boss, it’s just the luck of the table. I wouldn’t—“ He gasped at the grinding of the boot.  
  
Al looked down on him from what seemed like a long way up. “I’ve switched your tables, Paul. Changed your crowd when you stepped away. Money’s still short.  You’re fuckin’ skimming.”  
  
The downed man thought he felt something pop, and fire shot up his leg. “Okay! Okay…God, I’m sorry, Al. I lost at poker at another joint and couldn’t come up with enough to cover my losses quick enough. I got in debt to some dangerous men….”  
  
Al and Dan looked at each other, Al with a smirk over his dealer not considering him dangerous; Dan gone white over the dealer’s lack of self-preservation.  
  
“I see, Paul.” He seemed to mull the explanation over. “That makes sense, actually. Who would want to run afoul of dangerous men?”  
  
Paul had a split-second of hope that Al understood his point of view, before the boot heel came down on his ankle.  
  
“Don’t you scream, you cunt.”  
  
Paul bit through his lip trying to stifle a howl of pain. Gasping, he finally whispered something Al had to kneel down to hear.  
  
“How will you work with a shattered ankle…that what you said?”  
  
The man nodded wordlessly, eyes closed.  
  
“Not a problem, Paul. Don’t worry about it.”  
  
He motioned to Dan while he moved away.   
  
“Try to keep it all on the rug.”  He sat back at his desk as Dan unsheathed his knife.

  
  
********************

 

  
  
“Johnny!”  
  
Johnny locked the till, nodded at the barkeep to mind the girls, and went upstairs.  
  
“Who’s that undertaker that comes here regular? Mc-somethin’?”  
  
Johnny looked from Al at his desk, to Dan standing over a lumpy rolled-up rug.  
  
“McDermott? “  
  
“Yeah. Help Dan get Paul over to McDermott’s, tell him he gets a special rate on both ends, his services and a girl’s, if he gives Paul a swift and discreet burial.”  
  
“What hap--uh…never mind, boss.” It was Johnny’s turn to look pale as he stooped to help Dan lift the load.  
  
Al looked up. “Paul fell. A tragic accident.”  
  
Johnny looked at the seeping bloodstain on the underside of the rug.  
  
“And tell Jewel to get up here with a bucket and scrub brush.”  
  
“Sure thing, Al.” He looked out the open door. “Think we should wait till it clears out some, though? Still a lotta folk around.”  
  
Al walked out to the hallway, considering, then turned back to the boys.  
  
“No. Walk that skimming son of a bitch right through the fuckin’ crowd. Make sure the other dealers get a look. ‘Paul cheated Mr. Swearengen, then Paul fuckin’ fell’.   End of fuckin’ story, unless some other cocksucker decides to try their fuckin’ luck against my business interests.”  
  
He watched the two make their way down the stairs with their load, Johnny hollering for Jewel to get the cleaning bucket upstairs.  He leaned over the banister.  
  
“And get the word out we’re lookin’ to hire another faro dealer!”  
  
He watched Jewel make her way through the crowd, steps slow and awkward, bucket in hand. He figured he’d have time for another drink by the time she got upstairs.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thanks to the brilliant writers and actors on Deadwood who depicted Al's cat-and-mouse menace and the fear his targets exhibited. Fans will recognize hints of Al's encounters with E.B. Farnum, Jimmy Irons, Leon, and the Pinkerton from the 69th New York._


	11. The Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You got trouble, you call for Dan, you call for Johnny."_ Al continues making himself into the figure of fear he presents in "Deadwood."

  
_“Johnny!”_  
  
The high feminine scream carried from the tiny room holding a narrow bed and chair, to the ginger-haired man at the bar. The cry still was still echoing from the rafters when he kicked  the door open, hands aiming a rifle at the man’s head.  
  
“Leave off her and step away, now.”  
  
The drunken laborer still sat on the bed, knuckles of his right fist scraped raw from the whore’s teeth. The black-haired whore stood between the wall and the bed, holding her hand to her mouth.   
  
“Well?” Johnny raised a questioning eyebrow, not taking his aim off his target.  
  
She worked her mouth a second before speaking. “We was done, then before he got dressed, he wanted a suck again, didn’t want to pay.”  
  
She ran her fingers over her mouth and cheek, feeling for damage.  
  
“Thieving little bitch is lyin’, kid. I saw her go through my pants pocket when my back was turned.”  
  
Johnny heard footsteps behind him, expensive boots and a sure step.  
  
“Cover your tits and go get a rag, Sadie. Clean yourself up.”  
  
“Sure, Al.” She pulled up her smock and edged past Johnny to the door. Al stopped her, turned her face this way and that. “Get some ointment from Jewel to put on that.” She nodded and left.  
  
The trick had trouble making out the pimp’s expression with the brighter light of the saloon behind him, throwing his face into shadow.  
  
“I was—“  
  
“Shut up and listen, pal.”  
  
The trick waited, silent, prick shriveling as he wished he had put his pants on first.  
  
“You fuck her on the bed?”  
  
“Uh…yessir.”  
  
“So, your pants weren’t within her reach, over there on the chair.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I wasn’t asking you a question. I was makin’ an observation.”  
  
The man sat silent.  
  
Al ran his hand into the pants pocket, rummaging deep, past jackknife, coins, and other debris until his fingers touched the wallet.  
  
“Sure in here deep, for a wallet that was gettin’ lifted.”  
  
The man was now shivering, wishing more fervently for his pants, and that he had frequented a looser house.  
  
“It’s possible I was mistaken, sir. I been drinkin’ all evening. I coulda dozed a bit, maybe dreamed she was goin’ through my stuff.”  
  
Al nodded. “We all make mistakes, son. Johnny, put the gun down.”  
  
Johnny frowned but lowered his gun. The trick started to relax just a fraction.  
  
Al began speaking almost companionably. “Now, Sadie’s gonna be out of commission a day or two while her mouth heals. I need you to make that right.”  
  
“But I really did think she was thieving me,’ the man said. He was known by his friends as being one who tended to push his luck, and not a good judge of when to quit while ahead.  
  
This got a slightly raised eyebrow and a feigned look of understanding sympathy.  
  
“Well, we can’t have that…never let it be said that Al Swearengen don’t run a square house. You ever frequent here again and come up with similar concerns, you tell Johnny or one of the boys, they’ll take care of things. But we can’t have customers hitting the whores…you understand, right?”  
  
The man began nodding slowly at first, then eagerly.It sounded like he'd be leaving upright.  
  
“And we can’t have customers takin’ what they ain’t paid for. You want another round, you go make your payment. Send the whore out, if you like, if you don’t want to put your pants back on.” He smiled, gave the trick a wink.  
  
The trick was starting to breath normally again. “Sure thing, Mr. Swearengen. It won’t happen again.”  
  
Al tossed the man’s pants over. The trick pulled out his wallet with a humbled smile.  
  
“Payment? For the whore’s mouth?”  
  
Al glanced at the wallet, gauging its thickness. “Make it thirty. That’ll give her some time to heal without me comin’ up short. And whatever tip you planned to give her.”  
  
The man frowned at that but pulled thirty-two dollars out and tried to hand it to Al, who waved the cash over to Johnny.  
  
The man was buckling his belt, sweat drying now. “So, we square now? I apologize again for my mistake.”  
  
“We’re getting close.”  
  
The man was still working on what Al meant when a fist slammed against his mouth, knocking him back on the bed, blood starting to flow on his tongue and lips.  
  
He lay there and watched Al dab blood off his knuckles, mouth still turned up in a slight smile of affable congeniality.  
  
“ _Now_ we’re square.”  
  
The trick held his hand to his face, slipping past the swarthy pimp, wondering why, with his mouth cut and bleeding and his wallet thinner by thirty-two bucks, he still felt a warm wave of relief. He figured he’d work on the understanding of that once on the outside of the saloon’s doors. 


	12. "Afraid You'll Die, Afraid You Won't"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al is sick and tired of Trixie being sick and tired.  
> Trixie and laudanum part ways while her bridges are starting to burn, but first, just one more high...

 

It was in that last joint they worked in Cheyenne. Al rented the whole place. Big place, lot of rooms.  
  
She’d been flying on her laudanum high, half in, half out, nothing hurt anywhere.  
  
Al bending over her, yelling, shaking her.  
  
  _Let me sleep._  
  
 _God, he’s mad._  
  
“Too fuckin' high to yell for help.”  
  
He was talking to somebody over his shoulder.  
  
“That’s why I gave him two for one. I heard about that bastard. Figured with two…” His voice trailed off.  
  
Her bed was a big hammock, swaying back and forth in a summer breeze. Up, and down, and up. She could feel sunlight on her face.  
  
“Trixie okay? He hurt her any?”  
  
 _Why’s the new guy in here? Al don’t like the help visiting._  
  
“Oh,  _she’s_  fucking  _fine_. Slept through the whole thing. Useless.”  
  
Her mouth twitched in a frown _. He’s got that tone. God, go the fuck away!_  
  
“Take her downstairs, out the back. Undertaker’s a regular. Take this. Don’t let him make you pay full price.”  
  
Bills rustled. She smiled in her sleep.  _I know that sound._  
  
 _Arms and legs so heavy._  
  
Roosters and wagons outside. The day’s racket started.  
  
Head hurt like a mother-fucker _._  
  
 _Shit, did I take too much again?  Why am I still in the receiving room? Why’s he here?_  
  
“What?” She tried to focus on her boss, raising herself up on her elbows.  
  
“Get a good night’s sleep?”  He bit off the words, arms crossed, expressionless.  
  
“What are you so pissed off about? Where’s Darla?”  
  
She looked around the dingy room. There was the table, she was on the bed…the trunk was in the middle of the room.  _He’d been fuckin’ Darla on top of the trunk, holding her neck. Then her own eyelids got so heavy…_  
  
He got up, the wicker chair creaking. Walked over to her side. He picked up the clear glass bottle off the window sill. It was half-full. He sat it down on the table next to her.  
  
She looked up at him. The bags under his eyes were almost black. Green eyes were flat and bloodshot.  
  
“Darla’s at the undertaker’s.”  
  
“What’s she-“  
  
He picked the bottle up and slammed it down, hard.  
  
“I should pour this down your fucking throat.”  
  
His arm shook with the effort it took to take his hand off the bottle and not go for her neck.  He looked at her eyes, still glassy. He could smell the stink of her unbathed body, her sour breath. He turned away.  
  
“You want to go ahead and get it over with, feel free. Just…do it in your room. You’re holdin’ up business.”  
  
“Al, what the  _fuck_ —“She slumped back down as he left.  
  
She could hear him talking to Jewel outside the door.  
  
“Not another fucking word.  Keep her out of my sight.”  
  
Jewel got one of the boys to help Trixie to her stuffy cramped room.  
  
Jewel was in there a lot.  


 

**********

  
  
Al saw Jewel bringing up tea. Heard crying, retching. Early on he heard a scream.  
  
“Al said to keep it down. Damn, did something die in here? “  
  
Davy heard a muffled “Fuck you” from under the bedclothes.  
  
Jewel wrestled with bedclothes dripping with vomit and other fluids, bad leg dragging behind her.  
  
AL watched her struggle with the load.  
  
“Take those out the back. And quit looking at me like that.”  
  
Nobody asked why Trixie was taken off the floor. A couple of the whores started talking about her in the past tense.  
  
 One approached Al, offered to help.   
  
“You can buy her a bottle of dope. Pass the hat, make it a big one.”  
  
Nobody else mentioned her near Al after that.  
  
He could tell people quietly went into her room sometimes.  He heard moaning at odd hours.  
  
He quit looking in that direction.

  
 

 

******

 

  
   
She tapped at his open door. Clean, a little color in her cheeks, looking at him with clear blue eyes. Hand steady on the doorknob. She gave him a tentative smile. Her blond hair was shiny and smelled like soap and flowers.  
  
“Yeah?” He looked up from his books.  
  
“I’m better.”  
  
“So…get downstairs and get to work.”  
  
She nodded and started down the hall.  
  
“Trixie!” She turned.  
  
“Any time you’re not fucking, I better see you helping Jewel.”  
  
She nodded, went on downstairs, steps steady and light.  
  
He went around his desk and shut his door. He leaned his head against the doorframe.  
  
Almost wished he was a believer.  
  
 He said a soundless  _“Thank you”_  anyway.  
 


	13. False Dawn Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: A sober Trixie ponders expectations. A realistic Al has no good answers.

  


  
“Mollie Jansen did it. She did it with Mike Thompson, him that ran the tables at their place.”

Al snorted as he fastened the latches on the cash box. “Why are you tellin’ me this? What do you care what Mollie Jansen does? And, following that, why would you think  _I_ would?”

Trixie blew smoke out of her pursed lips as she stared out the window. Resting her head against the window frame, she watched the sun beginning to come up over the Hills. She looked longingly at the iron bed, half-way wishing she’d waited for another time to start this discussion.

“It ain’t that I  _care_. I’m just sayin’…some like us…some get married.”

He closed the safe, giving the lock a final spin, and rubbed his bleary eyes.

“Mollie and Mike put together don’t have more than half a brain between ‘em. I’d not look to them for life lessons. Where the fuck is this comin’ from, Trixie?”

She stubbed her cigarette out, setting it on the sill for later. “I just been thinkin'...I been with you for ten, eleven years or more. And some folk like us, them that’ve been together for a time,and work okay together and such…they get married.”

He stood up, groaning as his knee popped again.

“And some like us end up murderin’ each other. Like Dutch Jeff and Alice in Helena. Seems like they were married, too.” He frowned as he sat on the edge of the bed, shucking off his boots and pants. “Is this comin’ from you being off the dope?”   

Pulling the curtains closed, she turned away from the window. “I don’t know…maybe. Never thought much past the day at hand, before. Now, sometimes…yeah, I think about on down the road.”

He sniffed, then cleared his throat. “Neither you nor me know a goddamn thing about bein’ married, and it’s my thinkin’ things should stay that way, ignorance bein’ fucking bliss, as they say.”

He lay back, pulling the covers down on her side. She took her skirt and corset off and laid them neatly on the bedside chair.

“We both of us could learn, though, seems like. I could…” her voice trailed off as she realized she had little idea of what marriage would be like.

“Ah… _fuck_!” He got up and went to the piss pot in the corner again.  _Day was comin’ when he’d have to talk to a doc about needing to piss nearly every other hour._

He looked over his shoulder, trying to ignore the faint sting. “You planning on giving up earnin’, then?” Before she could speak, he continued. “Or you plannin’ to make your husband a cuckold?”

She frowned. “I figured maybe…I could help with the girls, or the cookin’ and the like.”

He strained, prick in hand, trying to get that last drop he could feel was still in there. “Got Jewel and Johnny for that. Or would you turn them out on the street?”

She looked down, studying the pattern on the bedspread.  _Cocksucker had an answer for everything. Seemed almost like he’d been plannin’ this conversation for years._

“Hadn’t thought about that.”

“Well, the last thing I’d want, if I  _did_  ever want a wife--which I  _don’t_ \--is one that didn’t think on all the angles of things.”

“I do okay at thinkin’ on angles. You know that.”

_Oh, Jeez…_

“Trixie, us like that…it’d end in divorce, or more likely, in blood, as I’d just as soon cut your throat as stand begging before some cocksucker judge to untie us.  And we’ve come close enough to blood already.” He squeezed the end of his prick, clearing that last drop.  “Besides, I need you as an earner. I’m gonna need that even more after we move to the camp.”

She shifted in the bed. “Mollie still works, I heard.”

He buttoned his long johns, suspecting he’d be up again before he got any decent sleep.

“And to my way of thinkin’, that makes Mike Thompson a cunt  _and_ a cuckold.”

He lay back, looking at her solemn face in the faint morning light as her eyes started closing. He remembered for a second or two what it felt like to take a good long piss and sleep for four or five hours straight, nothing creaking or aching. It seemed like a long time ago.

She nudged his chest with her head, getting comfortable. Rest came harder these days, with no dope to help her get floating and drowsy.

She felt his chest rise as he took a deep breath.

“I ain’t rulin’ it out forever.”

She froze in place, not knowing what she wanted to hear next.

“If the day comes that I can’t use you any more, I might consider marrying you off.”

He turned away from her, left hip grating against an errant bedspring.

“But it ain’t gonna be any time soon, and it ain’t gonna be me.”

He could swear he could feel her fuming, lips pressed together, as she turned her back to him. Both of their minds slowly spun in circles as they drifted off into their early morning sleep.

_He dreamed he was old and feeble, bedridden and begging a woman to end him, her refusing, him weeping._  They moved closer to each other in their sleep. 

She felt his ass against hers, and dreamed of a strong young man, and being loved without payment, as her back straightened to align her spine with his.

Neither felt rested when they rose again to start their saloon-time day.

  


 


	14. Grand Openings, Final Acts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> July 1876. Al's illegal land grab in the Black Hills pays off, and a legend is born, even if the cost is a murder a day and then some.
> 
> Seth Bullock: _"Where's the Gem?"_  
>  Dan Dority: _"You'll find it. Everybody does."_

_Jesus, Mary, and all the saints, I’m down to fuckin’ in a tent._

Trixie glared at everything in her field of vision: the canvas tents, the bare cots she could see through the open flap. The tree stump with boards laid over it as a crude card table. A wooden box holding a mixed heap of chipped glasses and jars. A crate holding full brown bottles.

The crate of liquor was the most sturdy-looking artifact in the clearing, a taunting reminder of what Al thought most vital.

_You know miners. They’ll slake their thirst and ease their pains before they get to spending money on whores and cards._

She sighed as she stepped down from the buckboard. Yeah, she knew miners, all right. None on this scale, though. According to Al, who was almost always right when it came to profit, the Deadwood strike was far richer than anything they’d seen.

The brass scales and weights gleamed in the afternoon sun, carefully set up and calibrated, with a stump of their very own. Al almost looked young again, at least from the back, driving hammer and nails into the large, gaudy sign.

_Our scales are square._

She reckoned that’s what educated folks called “irony.” Not that Al would short-change prospectors bringing in gold dust and nuggets to trade. That’d be a fine way to end up shot. But he’d finagle in every other way, get those nimble fingers in every developing pie in the camp. He’d already started gesturing with the heavy-set Chinaman two rows over, using the universal hand-signs for money and dope.

She pulled her shawl around her shoulders. Even at high summer, the gulch was so shadowed by the hills around them there was a chill in the air.

Not quite as biting as the chill she felt coming off of Al, but close enough to make her shiver.

“C’mon, let’s get this gear unpacked.” She waved Dolly and Jen over to the back of the buckboard and started grabbing carpet bags and sacks.

Christ, had they ever been so bad off she had to wash in a fuckin’ creek, piss in the fuckin’ woods?

And himself, with his fuckin’ instructions…

  _Don’t get fancy._

_In and out in fifteen minutes, if that._

_Push cock-sucking and hand jobs, cause there ain’t no doctor around here other than what Dan can do._

An hour later, the wagons were unloaded, campfires were going, and thank Christ, somebody’d started some coffee. A bucket of warm water was set just inside the entrance of the smaller tent, a few clean rags slung over the edge.

_At least he did that much, let us wash some of the filth off ‘em first._

She could see the back of Carolyn’s head bobbing in front of their first customer. His clothes were caked with mud but the area she was working on was clean enough, Trixie supposed _. Bet we could make some money offering baths, far as that goes. Be easier on us too._

Johnny and Dan were straining to lift another tent pole under the heavy sheet of canvas covering the main tent. Too damn big to look stable, to her way of thinking, but he’d already sent for a shipment of lumber and hardware. Another week, two at the most, he’d promised on their last night in Cheyenne, they’d be indoors, proper rooms and facilities. He had talked to her like he had in the old days, when it was him and her and their grand plans…at least for a few minutes.

He’d shuttered himself back up after that, flat-eyed and cold. He’d taken one of the other girls to bed that night, like a talisman against feeling anything for her again.

She shrugged as she watched them work. He couldn’t hold out forever. Whatever the fuck they had, he’d come back around to it. They both always did.

The final pole went into place. Al gave the others a thumbs-up of approval and came over to where she waited.

“So? What do you think? Not a bad start, right? It’ll keep the weather out until we get a regular joint built. We’ll hang some divider curtains up for folks’ tender sensibilities, have an indoor bar area in the front corner…a few lanterns hung inside.” His eyes looked alive again, dark-flecked green in a network of deepening wrinkles.

_Shit, this is probably the first thing he’s ever built. First joint that was all his._

_Maybe the closest thing he’s ever had to a home of his own._

Trixie guessed it was her home, too, the most of one she’d ever get. She really wanted to tell him he’d done okay, he’d done well, even, carving out this fledging camp, but they were both past that kind of talk now. She forced herself to put a mocking edge to her words.

“Yeah, Al. It’s a real gem.”

Striking a match against the buckboard, she lit a hand-rolled cigarette and waited for a snide response, breathing deep.

He glowered for a second, then a slow smile started spreading, curving his lips and crinkling his eyes even more.

“You know, you can be one loopy cunt, but you got a way with words sometimes. I was thinkin’ about The Golden Nugget or some such, but every cocksucker settin’ up shop’ll be using something about gold.” He nodded to himself. “Yeah, do something a little different. Short, easy to remember…”

Al turned to the workers and Trixie found herself moving to his side. Old habits died hard.

“Boys! Do me a banner outa some of that leftover canvas.” He waved his hands, describing dimensions and placement.

“The Gem Saloon,” he said, first to Trixie with a decisive nod, then louder, to the others.

“The Gem Saloon,” she affirmed, watching Dan draw the first letter in black paint, easily two feet high. The finished banner would be huge, at the scale he was going. She shrugged and dropped her cigarette on the muddy path, grinding it under her heel.

_At least we’ll be easy to find._

*****

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this in the summer of 2011, new to fanfiction writing, and wrote it over the next year and a half. Initially I was trying to work out the twisted, convoluted relationship between Al and Trixie. As unhealthy and dysfunctional as it was, it served a need that I felt compelled to explore--how did these two end up as we see them in the opening of "Deadwood?" What circumstances would have brought them to be abusive, affectionate, cold, kind, destructive, supportive?
> 
>  _"I mean, what can anyone of us ever really fuckin' hope for, huh? Except for a moment here and there with a person who doesn't want to rob, steal or murder us? At night, it may happen. Sun-up, one person against the fuckin' wall, the other mayhap on the fuckin' bed, trusting each other enough to tell half the fucking truth. Everybody needs that. Becomes precious to 'em. They don't want to see it fucked with."_ Al Swearengen, basically breaking down his view of him and Trixie.
> 
> I'm very grateful for the early support, guidance and feedback I received from readers and patient betas. Almost all of the events on the larger scale are true and are part of the history of the mid to late 1800s and of the American West. The historical figures of Al Swearengen, Dan Dority, Johnny Burns, and Jack Langrishe are characterized as how they were depicted in HBO's "Deadwood," plus artistic licence, not as how historical records show them.


End file.
